The NYT Spelling Bee for Saturday, August 1, 2026 has R as the center letter. The outer letters are A, B, C, I, K, T. Every answer must contain R, and all letters come from this seven-letter set.
There is one pangram today: BRICKBAT. It uses all seven letters – B, R, I, C, K, A, T – and is the hardest to spot because the repeated B disguises the full letter inventory. A brickbat is a piece of broken brick used as a missile, or more commonly now, a sharp critical remark.
NYT Spelling Bee Answers – August 1, 2026
9 letters (2): BACKTRACK, BARIATRIC
8 letters (4): BACCARAT, BARBARIC, BRICKBAT, CATARACT
7 letters (4): ARABICA, ATTRACT, BARRACK, RATATAT
6 letters (7): ARCTIC, BICARB, CITRIC, CRITIC, RABBIT, RIBBIT, TARTAR
5 letters (17): ATRIA, ATTAR, BRIAR, BRICK, CARAT, CIRCA, CIRRI, CRACK, CRICK, KARAT, RABBI, RAITA, TIARA, TRACK, TRACT, TRAIT, TRICK
4 letters (12): ARIA, BARB, BARK, BRAT, CARB, CART, CRAB, CRIB, KART, RACK, RICK, TART
Notes on Today’s Puzzle
BRICKBAT is the puzzle’s only pangram and its central challenge. Because the letter B appears twice in the word, solvers running through the letter set mentally can easily lose track and assume they have covered B already. The word dates to the 16th century when literal brickbats – shards of broken brick – were thrown in riots. The critical sense came later, around the 19th century, as the word migrated into newspaper language for a harsh public attack.
RATATAT (7 letters) is a satisfying find – an onomatopoeic word for rapid knocking or the sound of a machine gun. BACCARAT (8 letters) is the card game associated with casinos and James Bond. BARIATRIC (9 letters) comes from the Greek baros (weight) and iatros (physician) and refers to medicine focused on obesity treatment.
Among the shorter words, RIBBIT (the conventional written representation of a frog’s call) and TARTAR (the dental deposit, the medieval Tatar peoples, or the condiment sauce) are worth holding in reserve as second-pass finds. BICARB is the informal shortening of sodium bicarbonate.
For previous Spelling Bee answers, see NYT Spelling Bee for July 31, 2026 (center M, pangram OPTIMAL) and NYT Spelling Bee for July 29, 2026 (center B, pangrams OUTBOARD and TROUBADOUR).
