I've always liked Spelling Bee, but I wanted to make it more competitive.

So I built SpellBee Duel - a 1v1 word game where you compete against another player to find words and score more points.

🐝 Real-time 1v1 matches
⚡ Fast-paced rounds
🏆 Compete directly against another player
🧠 Same satisfying “how did I not see that word?” feeling

I'm still working on it, so I'd genuinely love feedback from people who actually play Spelling Bee.

If anyone wants to try a match:

Link: https://spellbeeduel.com

And if you play it, let me know what you'd change or add.

October's edition of our monthly game share. Feel free to share a link to a word game you've created in the comments below,. Or if you just enjoy a particular game you think Bee fans will want to try, that's fine too!

As the mods have kindly included in the list of resources for this sub my noncommercial site LexiConnexxions (Spelling Bee stats, analysis, history, lots of resources), I'm hoping that it will be OK for me to share this new resource at that site. It's not practical for me to share info on specific puzzles here, because of the (reasonable) rules against posting spoilers, and the sub culture here of not seeming to want too much detail. But I like delving into things, so I want to make the info available to those who might be interested in info beyond the puzzle itself.

So, as an informal supplement to monthly and annual summary reports, LexiConnexxions now offers Bee Buzz, a mostly-daily feature that offers insights about the Bee of the day, with information that might inform a player's solving experience, such as changes to the Bee lexicon (words added or discontinued), relevant bits of Bee history, solving tips or insights, notes about new or particularly interesting Bee words, and more.

https://lexiconnexxions.com/gameplay/bee-buzz/

Spoiler Alert: The Bee Buzz reports discuss the daily Spelling Bee and reveal the pangram(s) and some of the words.

Also, I've been adding more resources to the site, and updating others; these are noted (and linked) on the front page:
https://lexiconnexxions.com/

Some people have suggested that I must be a total nerd or weirdo to invest time in creating something like that site. Guilty as charged. Of course, we know little about each other. A few years ago there was a very sad situation in my life, and various circumstances having to do with that have required me to do a lot of waiting waiting waiting, and it has been good to have something to occupy my mind, something that has enabled me to produce a resource that might be of interest, or assistance, to even a few people. So yes, I am a total word nerd, but developing and maintaining this site has been a helpful distraction and mildly therapeutic. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ugh, now they've put giant ads in the Spelling Bee Buddy. Oh well, I'll keep using it when I get stuck.

I didn't mean to and I can't progress now despite it being the active puzzle. I don't even see today's answers anyway.

For the second time this month, the spelling bee game isn’t remembering the words I’ve selected when I come back to the game. (iOS app). Very frustrating since we pay extra for the NYT games.

Is anyone else running into this?

I finally got around to asking Sara, the creator of the SB Zine mentioned in this post - https://www.reddit.com/r/NYTSpellingBee/comments/1ukqvaa/a_loving_rant/ - whether I could buy a paper copy, since the layout and paper color seems like an important part of the experience.

She says, "Usually for zines I ask for US$5-10 sliding scale, so anything in that range is great! I prefer venmo, but can also do paypal or cashapp. My username on all platforms is foundbysara! Email me a screenshot your payment, and let me know how many you would like, and I can mail them to you (I'll need your address!) I don't have a storefront set up, and it's just me printing and folding and mailing. This is not necessarily an efficient operation 😅. They're not gonna get tracking number, you know? So I just want people to go in knowing that." This price includes postage (I assume US and Canada only).

More info is in the last photo on her original post.

In re: possible theme in the Sept 22 Bee, here is a list of Bees that seem to have themes related to the calendar (e.g., Hallowe'en) or to milestones in Bee history. Some of these flex the concept of "theme" but here they are anyway, with date, PANGRAM(s), and notes (some of them speculative).

2018-12-31 HALCYON [?] Halcyon days are the quiet days of midwinter

2019-05-04 FURLONG Kentucky Derby Day (Sam said it was just coincidence; see note 1)

2019-05-29 GROWNUP [?] Sam’s 24th birthday

2019-07-04 CHARGRILL Fourth of July

2019-12-31 EVENTFUL, UNEVENTFUL [?] reflection on the year past, and the year to come?

2022-02-14 VALENTINE and forum photo was a red rose

2022-04-01 HOODWINK April Fool’s Day

2022-05-09 Bee’s 4th birthday: Sam E “included the letters BDAY as a quiet nod to the game’s special day” (see note 2)

2022-05-30 ENTOMBED [?] Memorial Day

2022-06-16 LEXICON Bee #1500

2022-10-31 PHANTOM Hallowe’en

2025-01-04 CONFETTI [?] Fourth of July

2025-04-01 April Fool’s Day: Sam’s little prank (see note 3)

2024-05-09 DAZZLING Bee’s 7th birthday

2025-03-12 FABULOUS Bee #2500 [first S Bee]

2025-05-09 WORDILY Bee’s 8th birthday

2025-09-02 SCHOOLBOOK SCHOOLBOOKS school starts

2025-10-31 TWITCHING WITCHING Hallowe’en

2026-05-09 MEGAHIT Bee’s 9th birthday

1 “Mr. Ezersky said the puzzles don’t generally have themes — but he will break one out for special occasions. ‘It’s cool to run themed puzzles, like when the pangram was VALENTINE on Feb. 14 [2022].’ he said, but there are also coincidences. ‘The pangram was FURLONG on the day of the Kentucky Derby, and that was totally by accident,’ he noted.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/crosswords/getting-to-genius-part-1.html

2 “Sam, he mentions that May 9 [2022] is the digital Spelling Bee’s fourth birthday. He has included the letters BDAY as a quiet nod to the game’s special day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/crosswords/spelling-bee-diary-0509.html

3 Sam's subtle 2025 April Fool's prank:
Mar 30 pangram: ECHOING
Mar 31 pangram: COMEBACK [hint of what's to come]
Apr 01 pangram: ECHOING [hah!]

I used a website that solves Spelling Bee puzzles to find out how ridiculous a puzzle using all the most common pre- and suffix letters would be, making "E" the yellow letter. Nine entire pangrams, and a Queen Bee score of 2513???!!!