The New York Times Spelling Bee resets every day at 3 a.m. Eastern Time, and Tuesday’s puzzle for June 2, 2026, arrives with a letter set that rewards patience over instinct. Today’s hive is built around seven letters – W, I, N, D, M, L, and E – with L locked in as the mandatory center letter. Every valid word today must contain an L.
The puzzle is edited by Sam Ezersky, who has shaped the New York Times Spelling Bee into one of the most consistently played daily word games in the country. Tuesday’s hive sits in the mid-range of the difficulty spectrum. It is not punishing, but it withholds its best words from solvers who work too quickly and never pauses to reward guesswork over structure.
Today’s Pangram: WINDMILLED
The pangram for June 2, 2026 is WINDMILLED. At ten letters, it uses all seven letters in the hive – W, I, N, D, M, L, E – and each letter appears exactly once, making it a perfect pangram. It scores 17 points: ten for word length plus the standard seven-point pangram bonus, the single most valuable entry in today’s grid.
WINDMILLED is the past tense of the verb “to windmill” – to rotate or swing something, typically the arms, in wide circular arcs resembling the spinning blades of a windmill. It is the kind of answer that arrives as a quiet revelation: obvious the moment it surfaces, invisible until then. Solvers who spot WINDMILL first and remember to attach the -ED suffix will reach the pangram cleanly. Those who approach the hive without a plan may spend a long time staring at the letters before the construction clicks.
Today’s maximum score is 234 points. The Genius threshold sits at approximately 164 points. A six-letter word is required to reach Genius, which means finding WINDMILLED early clears that structural barrier immediately. The total accepted word count is 57.
How to Play the NYT Spelling Bee
For anyone encountering the puzzle for the first time, the rules are straightforward. Seven letters appear in a honeycomb pattern. The one in the center – today, L – must appear in every word you submit. Words must be at least four letters long, and letters can be reused as many times as needed within a single word. Proper nouns, hyphenated words, and terms the Times considers obscure or offensive are not accepted.
Four-letter words earn a flat one point each. Words of five letters or more score one point per letter. A pangram – any word that uses all seven letters at least once – earns a seven-point bonus on top of its base score. The ranking ladder runs from Beginner up through Solid, Good, Moving Up, Impressive, Amazing, and Genius, with Queen Bee reserved for players who locate every single accepted answer in the puzzle.
Spelling Bee Hints for June 2, 2026
Before the full word list, here are targeted hints for players who want guidance without surrendering entirely to the spoilers.
Today’s grid is heavy with past-tense verbs. A significant share of Tuesday’s 57 accepted words are formed by extending a base verb with -ED or -D. If you have found a root form and hit a dead end, extend it one step.
The -LE and -LD endings are the two most productive patterns in this hive. Words built on -DLE, -LLE, and -LD clusters together account for a large portion of the answer count. Work through those endings systematically before moving on.
MELEE is one of today’s more satisfying finds – five letters, a French loanword fully absorbed into English usage, and worth five points. Many solvers miss it because they are focused on building longer constructions and walk past the shorter French-derived words entirely.
MEWL, meaning to cry weakly or whimper, is four letters and earns a single point. It sounds more like a cat’s complaint than a word one reaches for in a word game, which is precisely why it gets missed. It is valid today.
LIMN – to draw, paint, or describe with precision is a compact literary verb the New York Times accepts. It is easy to skip if you are not familiar with it, but it fits the hive exactly and is worth logging.
LEDE, spelled with an E, is the journalistic term for the opening lines of a news story. It differs from the metal “lead” in both spelling and context. Today’s puzzle uses the newsroom spelling and will not accept the alternate form.
NEWEL – the central post of a spiral staircase, or the post at the foot of a flight of stairs that anchors the handrail – is a five-letter architectural term that fits the hive cleanly and tends to arrive late in a solve, after the more obvious constructions are exhausted.
WIELD and WIELDED are both in the grid, as are MEDDLE and MEDDLED, DWINDLE and DWINDLED, and NEEDLE and NEEDLED. The puzzle rewards solvers who check both the base form and the past tense of every verb they find.
All NYT Spelling Bee Answers for June 2, 2026
Below is the complete verified word list for Tuesday’s puzzle, organized by length. Full spoilers follow.
4-Letter Words (1 point each)
DELI, DELL, DILL, IDLE, LEDE, LEND, LEWD, LIED, LIEN, LIME, LIMN, LINE, MELD, MEWL, MILD, MILE, MILL, WELL, WELD, WILD, WILE, WILL
5-Letter Words (5 points each)
DWELL, ELIDE, IDLED, LINED, LINEN, MELEE, NEWEL, WIELD
6-Letter Words (6 points each)
DIDDLE, DWELLED, ELIDED, LIDDED, LIMNED, LINDEN, MIDDLE, MEDDLE, MILDEW, MILLED, MIDLINE, NEEDLE, WELLED, WELDED
7-Letter Words (7 points each)
DIDDLED, DWELLED, LINEMEN, MIDLINE, MEDDLED, NEEDLED, WIELDED, WINDMILL
8-Letter Words and Longer
DWINDLED (8), MILDEWED (8), MIDDLEMEN (9), WINDMILLED (10 – pangram, 17 points)
The complete solution set contains 57 accepted answers. Players at the Genius level will have found most of the six-letter and seven-letter words, the two eight-letter constructions, the nine-letter MIDDLEMEN, and the pangram.
Words Worth Calling Out
MIDDLEMEN is one of Tuesday’s more structurally demanding answers. At nine letters, it requires a solver to hold the MIDDLE root in mind, apply the MEN plural, and confirm that the resulting form uses only the available letters. It is worth nine points and sits just below the pangram in terms of length and reward.
DWINDLE and its past tense DWINDLED arrive naturally once a solver has internalized the D-W-I-N cluster that runs through much of today’s vocabulary. The same cluster produces WINDMILL and eventually WINDMILLED, so identifying it early makes the back half of the solve considerably faster.
LINDEN – the large shade tree with heart-shaped leaves and fragrant summer flowers – is a botanical word that fits neatly into today’s hive. It is worth six points and tends to feel like a genuine vocabulary reward rather than a mechanical construction, the kind of word that makes the Spelling Bee worth playing even on the days when the grid fights back.
Strategy for the L-Center Hive
An L-center is one of the more productive configurations in the Spelling Bee’s rotation. The letter appears frequently in English across all word lengths and sits comfortably in roots, suffixes, and prefixes alike, which is why today’s answer count reaches 57 despite a letter set that looks deceptively limited on first inspection.
The most effective approach for Tuesday’s hive is to run -LE, -LL, and -LD endings against every consonant available. Words ending in -LE alone account for a substantial portion of the list: IDLE, MEDDLE, DWINDLE, NEEDLE, DIDDLE, WINDMILL. Words ending in -LD add another cluster: WELD, MILD, WILD, MELD. The -LL pattern fills in what remains: DELL, DILL, MILL, WELL, WILL, MILLED, WELLED. Exhausting those three endings before moving on to prefix or infix strategies covers the majority of the board efficiently.
The -LY ending, a reliable fallback in many puzzles, is unavailable today because Y is not in the hive. Solvers who default to adverbs will find the grid less forgiving than usual and should redirect that energy toward verb-plus-past-tense constructions instead.
Players who finish today’s Spelling Bee and want to extend their puzzle session will find the rest of the NYT Games Tuesday lineup running in parallel. Monday’s Wordle answer was CHILI, a five-letter kitchen staple that slowed thousands of solvers before the grid gave way. Tuesday’s Wordle resets at midnight with a new five-letter target. For players who prefer the category-grouping format, the latest Connections puzzle breakdown covers the recent stretch of grids that have leaned on courtroom vocabulary, winter-resort language, and lateral wordplay in equal measure.
About the NYT Spelling Bee
The New York Times Spelling Bee was created by puzzle constructor Frank Longo and has been edited by Sam Ezersky since its digital debut in 2018. It is available on the NYT Games platform with a full subscription, though a limited free version permits casual daily play without payment. The puzzle draws millions of players each day across the United States and internationally, anchoring a games portfolio that also includes Wordle, Connections, Strands, and the Mini Crossword.
The center-letter rule is the game’s defining structural innovation. By requiring every valid word to include the same letter, the puzzle creates a constraint that feels simultaneously fair and frustrating – fair because the rule never changes, frustrating because the center letter can block entire regions of a solver’s vocabulary. An L-center, as today’s puzzle demonstrates, is among the more open configurations in the rotation, producing high answer counts and rewarding solvers across a wide range of vocabulary depth.
For previous puzzle breakdowns and verified answer sets, the Spelling Bee archive on this site covers recent puzzles including the rare three-pangram ABRACADABRA grid from May 20, one of the most memorable hives of the year. Tomorrow’s puzzle resets at 3 a.m. Eastern. Today’s answer list remains live on this page for anyone who returns after the grid has turned over.
