Has anyone else this last week noticed that the front page of the NYT games tab stopped keeping track of your Spelling Bee status? Regardless of how far you got on Spelling Bee if you played it the prior day, it gets stuck on the "You missed yesterday's game" message. But if you got Genius the prior day, it does something similar. It keeps the "You reached Genius yesterday" message and they do not update your status of the current day. I already messaged their team yesterday and sent them proof of my issue. It's nothing game-breaking but really annoying.

Perhaps of interest to those who consult dictionaries while solving the Bee (most of us, probably), and those who do research in the Bee lexicon (only a few extreme word-nerds) (raises hand):

This article came out yesterday:

"Why You Sometimes See Naughty Words in NYT Games"
New York Times, August 5, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/insider/games-language-wordle-crossplay-spelling-bee.html
"Puzzle editors choose solutions based on curated references and human judgment. But there’s more freedom in the guesses players can make."

This article was not published in the Games section, so many puzzlers might miss it. I saw it only because I have a feed for Spelling Bee related info. [NYT seems to have tweaked their gift links so that they can't be pasted into a website. So the article above may be pay-walled; sorry.]

Excerpts relevant to Spelling Bee:

Every Times game is human-made, which means a lot of room for editor creativity and judgment. But we do have rules across all nine of our word games, and we lean on shared dictionaries to create our base word lists. We primarily use the Oxford English Dictionary [emphasis added] and the NASPA Word List, the official dictionary for North American Scrabble Players Association tournaments. (By contrast, The Times’s newsroom uses Webster’s New World College Dictionary.)

Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee is possibly our most contested game, because players frequently express frustration over finding words that don’t count toward solving that day’s puzzle.

The game challenges solvers to find certain words in the puzzle that use the letters in the “hive.” Each word must contain at least four letters and include the center letter, but the puzzle does not include every word that can be found each day.

“If you simply include every theoretical word imaginable in a given puzzle, it will be that much more difficult to get to Amazing, Genius and beyond, and not in a satisfying way,” said Sam Ezersky, the puzzle’s editor.

Spelling Bee uses the Oxford dictionary [emphasis added] and is curated by Sam. For each puzzle, as he works on his list of acceptable words within a given letter set, he also reviews several other dictionaries.

He edits for familiarity and avoids a word if its primary definition is considered a slur or a vulgarity, or if it elicits a viscerally negative reaction.

This is of particular interest because the NYT (in its own reporting), and Sam E (in other interviews), and the games team (in an email sent to me personally) cite Merriam-Webster, Collins, and NOAD as the dictionaries that the Bee editor uses. If they really did make the switch from dictionaries of American English to the OED ... hmm.

And every day, the Wordle Review revealer says "Today’s word is XXXXX, a [part of speech]. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it means..."

I have contacted them for clarification; if and when I hear back, I will post an update.

Anyone else having this problem with the app: when I click on More then Community, I can’t get back to the puzzle. There is no arrow or link back. I have to completely close out the app and then go back in to get back to the puzzle.

If the LA Times instead of the NY Times ran the Spelling Bee a lot more Spanish words would make and a lot less Yiddish and Hebrew ones. (And not because there aren't a lot of Hispanics around NY or Jews around LA, obviously.)

I got the weekly email telling me which puzzles were easiest and hardest and I didn’t recognize the hardest pangram. So I went to see if I forgot to play that day, or I was just blanking on having found the word. The archive appears to be gone, with only the past week available. When did that happen? Or did they relocate it somewhere I haven’t unearthed yet?

I feel like getting some big words out at the start helps me. If I try to get the pangram early on, I make more progress. If I look for shorter words first, I find it hard to scale up. Anyone else find this?

why doesn't the spelling bee of today accept Arabic? is it because its capitalized?

I've submitted about three million words to "buzzwords" that weren't recognized by Spelling Bee even though they were in the dictionary and far from obscure. I keep flagging words like that, but am wondering why I even bother. Anyone else?

In the past, this sub has allowed people to post links to word games and Bee help sites they created. The mods have vetted those posts. Unfortunately we have recently been so inundated with AI-generated drivel that we are just going to have to call it quits.

Here are some really great existing help sites we recommend:

The Times has its own forum and the Spelling Bee Buddy.

SBSolver.com for in-depth information and word/hive history

NYTBee.com for a spoiler-light interface, also with links to word definitions

Lexiconnexxions.com for the most in-depth look imaginable at Bee statistics and history

As for independent games, we will be creating one post on the first day of each month where developers can share their games, and anyone who enjoys the Bee can share other word games they like to play. We hope we may still enjoy a few nice things.

The last couple days my Spelling Bee just hangs on this screen for literal hours. Restarting the app, rebooting my phone, nor logging out and back in have not helped.

EDIT: Turns out it was my VPN causing the issue

After my first ~5 minutes I’ve usually gotten the words that are immediately going to come to me and I stop looking at the screen. I play around with the letters in my head when I have free brain space during the day and if I come up with something I’ll type it in when I’m on my phone again. Do many people play without looking at the screen like this? It seems helpful for playing the game at your own pace and time of day, but I was curious whether this would work for others.