Today’s NYT Spelling Bee (July 18, 2026) features center letter E with outer letters L, I, P, T, C, and A – yielding two pangrams, ELLIPTICAL and TAILPIECE, and a total of 86 valid words.
Hints – no spoilers yet
- The center letter is a vowel shared by both pangrams.
One pangram describes a curved geometric shape; the other names something found at the end of a document, a piece of music, or a stringed instrument.
The longest word is 10 letters and doubles as a term in orbital mechanics and lens design.
Today’s Pangrams
ELLIPTICAL (10 letters, 17 points): shaped like an ellipse. Used in astronomy to describe a non-circular orbit, in optics for a lens profile, and in rhetoric for language that deliberately omits words. TAILPIECE (9 letters, 16 points): the concluding passage of a piece of writing or music, or the wooden fitting at the base of a violin or cello to which the strings are anchored.
Word List by Length (86 total)
10 letters: ELLIPTICAL
9 letters: EPILEPTIC, TAILPIECE
8 letters: ECLECTIC, ECLIPTIC, ELLIPTIC, PELLICLE, TACTICAL
7 letters: ACETATE, CALCITE, CAPITAL, CATALPA, CATCALL, CATTAIL, ELECTEE, ILLICIT, LACTATE, LACTEAL, LATTICE, PICCATA, PLACATE, TACTILE
6 letters: ACACIA, ACCEPT, ACETAL, ACETIC, ALPACA, APIECE, CAPLET, CATTLE, CELIAC, ELICIT, ICICLE, IPECAC, ITALIC, LACTIC, LAICAL, PALACE, PEPTIC, TACTIC
5 letters: APACE, ATTIC, CACTI, CALLA, CELLI, CILIA, CLEAT, ECLAT, ELECT, ILIAC, LICIT, LILAC, PEACE, PIECE, PLACE, TACET, TACIT
4 letters: ACAI, CALL, CAPE, CELL, CITE, CLAP, CLIP, EPIC, LACE, LAIC, LICE, PACE, PACT, PICA, TACT, TALC
Saturday’s board runs harder than average. ECLIPTIC – the Sun’s apparent annual path across the celestial sphere – and PELLICLE – a thin protective membrane or film – are the specialist-vocabulary traps most likely to separate solvers from Queen Bee status. PICCATA and CATALPA (a flowering ornamental tree) demand a culinary and botanical range. The pair of pangrams is the board’s silver lining: ELLIPTIC is reachable early and extends cleanly to ELLIPTICAL, while TAILPIECE falls into place once T-A-I-L is on the board. Yesterday’s center letter was U, with pangram ALBUMEN.
