Thursday, September 18, 2025

Answers to yesterday's Bee

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The official answers for today's puzzle are:

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Number of Pangrams: 2

Maximum Puzzle Score: 169

Number of Answers: 21

Points Needed for Genius: 118

Genius requires between 12 and 18 words. You need at least a 10-letter word to reach genius. If you don't get the pangrams, you need 89% of the total points to reach genius. If you get the pangrams, you only need 62% of the remaining points to reach genius.

The button below will reveal a chart with the number of words by each letter. Red bars indicate that there is a pangram(s) starting with that letter.


How does this puzzle compare to other puzzles?

Today's score of 169 was in the 50th percentile of all puzzles.
The last time there was a score this high was on September 17, 2025.
The highest score ever was 537 on January 22, 2021.
The lowest score ever was 47 on March 27, 2023.

This puzzle's 21 possible answers rank it in the 2nd percentile of all puzzles.
The last time there were fewer answers than this was on September 17, 2025.
The highest number of answers was 81 on June 8, 2019.
The lowest number of answers was 16 on March 27, 2023.

It takes a 10-letter word for genius.
The last time this happened was on December 28, 2024.

Today's puzzle has an average word length of 7.5.
For all Bees, the average word length has been 5.3.



Haven't I seen these letters before?

Hover over a letter to see its first and most recent appearance in the Bee!



Haven't I seen these words before?

The most common words in the Bee are:

  • noon 213
  • loll 203
  • toot 196
  • naan 179
  • nana 179
  • lilt 144
  • till 144
  • tilt 144
  • nene 139
  • tint 139
  • mama 137
  • mamma 137
  • acacia 133
  • acai 133
  • onto 130
  • toon 130
  • onion 126
  • anal 121
  • anon 121
  • dodo 117
  • tact 117
  • olio 116
  • boob 115
  • booboo 115
  • baba 114
  • papa 113
  • poop 113
  • lull 111
  • lulu 111
  • call 109
  • calla 109
  • mitt 108
  • mono 107
  • moon 107
  • ratatat 107
  • tart 107
  • tartar 107
  • tutu 107
  • attar 106
  • cocci 106
  • tattoo 106
  • allay 105
  • ally 105
  • loon 105
  • tatty 105
  • ammo 104
  • momma 104
  • epee 100
  • peep 100
  • cancan 99


How long are words in the Bee?

There have been 106,920 answers ever accepted in the Bee - with 10,791 unique words.
Below are the distributions of the lengths of these words.



Valid dictionary words not in today's official answers

You may be wondering why these words aren't here*:

  • avant
  • gaingiving
  • gingiva
  • graving
  • invaginating
  • invar
  • navar
  • navarin
  • ravin
  • ravining
  • riving
  • tittivating
  • vagi
  • vair
  • vang
  • vanning
  • vara
  • varia
  • variating
  • varna
  • vatting
  • viga
  • vigia
  • vina
  • vining
  • virga
  • vita
  • vitrain
  • vitta
  • viva
  • vivaria
  • vivat

*Because the New York Times considers them obscure or offensive.

aggravating

verb
  1. To make (an offence) worse or more severe; to increase in offensiveness or heinousness.
  2. (by extension) To make worse; to exacerbate.
  3. To give extra weight or intensity to; to exaggerate, to magnify.
  4. To pile or heap (something heavy or onerous) on or upon someone.
  5. To exasperate; to provoke or irritate.

arriving

verb
  1. To reach; to get to a certain place.
  2. To obtain a level of success or fame; to succeed.
  3. To come; said of time.
  4. To happen or occur.
  5. To reach; to come to.
  6. To bring to shore.

avatar

noun
  1. The incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu.
  2. The physical embodiment of an idea or concept; a personification.
  3. A digital representation of a person or being; often, it can take on any of various forms, as a participant chooses. e.g. 3D, animated, photo, sketch of a person or a person's alter ego, sometimes used in a virtual world or virtual chat room.

avian

noun
  1. A bird.
  2. A bird-like or flying creature.
  3. (furry fandom) Someone who roleplays or describes themselves as being a bird or bird-like animal character with human characteristics.
adjective
  1. Characteristic of or pertaining to birds, or to bird-like or flying creatures.

aviating

verb
  1. To operate an aircraft.

giving

verb
  1. (ditransitive) To move, shift, provide something abstract or concrete to someone or something or somewhere.
  2. (ditransitive) To estimate or predict (a duration or probability) for (something).
  3. To yield slightly when a force is applied.
  4. To collapse under pressure or force.
  5. To provide, as, a service or a broadcast.
  6. To lead (onto or into).
  7. To provide a view of.
  8. To exhibit as a product or result; to produce; to yield.
  9. To cause; to make; used with the infinitive.
  10. To cause (someone) to have; produce in (someone); effectuate.
  11. To allow or admit by way of supposition; to concede.
  12. To attribute; to assign; to adjudge.
  13. To communicate or announce (advice, tidings, etc.); to pronounce or utter (an opinion, a judgment, a shout, etc.).
  14. To grant power or permission to; to allow.
  15. To devote or apply (oneself).
  16. To become soft or moist.
  17. To shed tears; to weep.
  18. To have a misgiving.
  19. To be going on, to be occurring
noun
  1. The act of bestowing as a gift; a conferring or imparting.
  2. A gift; a benefaction.
  3. The act of softening, breaking, or yielding.
adjective
  1. Having the tendency to give; generous

gravitating

verb
  1. To move under the force of gravity.
  2. To tend or drift towards someone or something, as though being pulled by gravity.

invariant

noun
  1. An invariant quantity, function etc.
adjective
  1. Not varying; constant
  2. Unaffected by a specified operation (especially by a transformation)
  3. Neither covariant nor contravariant.

inviting

verb
  1. To ask for the presence or participation of someone or something.
  2. To request formally.
  3. To encourage.
  4. To allure; to draw to; to tempt to come; to induce by pleasure or hope; to attract.
noun
  1. Invitation
adjective
  1. Alluring; tempting; attractive.

navigating

verb
  1. To plan, control and record the position and course of a vehicle, ship, aircraft, etc., on a journey; to follow a planned course.
  2. To give directions, as from a map, to someone driving a vehicle.
  3. To travel over water in a ship; to sail.
  4. To move between web pages, menus, etc. by means of hyperlinks, mouse clicks, or any other mechanism.
  5. To find a way through a difficult situation or process.

nirvana

noun
  1. Complete cessation of suffering; a blissful state attained through realization of sunyata; enlightened experience.
  2. (non-Buddhist) State of paradise; heightened or great pleasure.

ravaging

verb
  1. To devastate or destroy something.
  2. To pillage or sack something, to lay waste to something.
  3. To wreak destruction.
noun
  1. The act by which something is ravaged.

raving

verb
  1. To wander in mind or intellect; to be delirious; to talk or act irrationally; to be wild, furious, or raging.
  2. To speak or write wildly or incoherently.
  3. To talk with unreasonable enthusiasm or excessive passion or excitement; followed by about, of, or (formerly) on.
  4. To rush wildly or furiously.
  5. To attend a rave (dance party).
noun
  1. (usually in the plural) Wild, incoherent, or irrational talk.
adjective
  1. Talking wildly.
  2. Causing excitement or wild praise.
adverb
  1. Incoherently

titivating

verb
  1. To make small improvements or alterations to (one's appearance etc.); to add some finishing touches to.

trivia

Etymology 1

noun
  1. Insignificant trifles of little importance, especially items of unimportant information
  2. A quiz game that involves obscure facts.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. (in medieval universities) The lower division of the liberal arts; grammar, logic and rhetoric.
  2. The three anterior ambulacra of echinoderms, collectively.

vagina

noun
  1. The passage leading from the opening of the vulva to the cervix of the uterus for copulation and childbirth in female mammals.
  2. A similar part in some invertebrates.
  3. A sheath-like structure, such as the leaf of a grass that surrounds a stem.
  4. The vulva.

vagrant

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A person who wanders from place to place; a nomad, a wanderer.
  2. (specifically) A person without settled employment or habitation who supports himself or herself by begging or some dishonest means; a tramp, a vagabond.
  3. Vagrans egista, a widely distributed Asian butterfly of the family Nymphalidae.
  4. An animal, typically a bird, found outside its species' usual range.

Etymology 2

adjective
  1. Wandering from place to place, particularly when without any settled employment or habitation.
  2. Of or pertaining to a vagabond or vagrant, or a person fond of wandering.
  3. Moving without a certain direction; roving, wandering; also, erratic, unsettled.

vain

adjective
  1. Overly proud of oneself, especially concerning appearance; having a high opinion of one's own accomplishments with slight reason.
  2. Having no real substance, value, or importance; empty; void; worthless; unsatisfying.
  3. Effecting no purpose; pointless, futile.
  4. Showy; ostentatious.

variant

noun
  1. Something that is slightly different from a type or norm.
  2. A different sequence of a gene (locus).
  3. A variable that can hold any of various unrelated data types.
  4. One of a set of words or other linguistic forms that conveys the same meaning or serves the same function.
adjective
  1. Showing variety, diverse.
  2. Showing deviation or disagreement.
  3. Variable.
  4. Covariant and/or contravariant.

virgin

noun
  1. A person who has never had sexual intercourse, or sometimes, one who has never engaged in any sexual activity at all.
  2. (early Christian Church) a woman noted for religious piety who has never been married.
  3. One who has never used or experienced a specified thing.
  4. Any of several species of gossamer-winged butterflies of the family Lycaenidae.
  5. A female insect producing eggs from which young are hatched, though there has been no fecundation by a male; a parthenogenetic insect.
adjective
  1. (usually not comparable) In a state of virginity; chaste, not having had sexual intercourse.
  2. Of a physical object, untouched.
  3. Not yet cultivated, explored, or exploited by humans or humans of certain civilizations.
  4. Of olive oil, obtained by mechanical means, so that the oil is not altered.
  5. (usually not comparable) Of mixed drinks, not containing alcohol.

vitiating

verb
  1. To spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something
  2. To debase or morally corrupt
  3. To violate, to rape
  4. To make something ineffective, to invalidate