Today’s NYT Spelling Bee for Sunday, August 16, 2026 has center letter C and outer letters B, D, E, L, O, and U. There are two pangrams, BECLOUD and BECLOUDED, and 52 words in total for a perfect score of 257 points.
The letter set is the story here. Of the seven letters, only three are vowels, and they are E, O, and U. There is no A and no I anywhere on the board, which strips out most of the common four-letter filler that usually pads a Bee grid and pushes the puzzle toward a narrow band of verbs.
That constraint produces the most useful shortcut of the day. Roughly twenty of the 52 answers are simply another answer with ED added. CEDE and CEDED, CODE and CODED, CUBE and CUBED, CLUE and CLUED, COOL and COOLED, CULL and CULLED, CLOUD and CLOUDED, COBBLE and COBBLED, CODDLE and CODDLED, CUDDLE and CUDDLED, DECODE and DECODED, DEDUCE and DEDUCED, COLLUDE and COLLUDED, OCCLUDE and OCCLUDED, and BECLOUD and BECLOUDED all appear as pairs. Find the base verb, and you have found two words, which is why this grid rewards working systematically rather than casting around.
BECLOUD is the seven-letter pangram and the best value single word on the board at 14 points. It means to obscure or to make unclear, and it survives in English mostly as a slightly literary way of saying that something has muddied an argument. BECLOUDED, the nine-letter form, is the longest answer in the puzzle.
Here is the complete answer list, organised by length.
- Four letters (15): BLOC, CEDE, CELL, CLOD, CLUB, CLUE, CODE, COED, COLD, COOL, CUBE, CUED, CULL, DECO, LOCO
- Five letters (12): BOCCE, CEDED, CELEB, CELLO, CLOUD, CLUED, CODED, COOED, COULD, CUBED, DEUCE, EDUCE
- Six letters (11): BOUCLE, CELLED, COBBLE, CODDLE, COOLED, COULEE, CUDDLE, CULLED, DECODE, DEDUCE, EDUCED
- Seven letters (11): BECLOUD, CELLULE, CLOUDED, CLUBBED, COBBLED, CODDLED, COLLUDE, CUDDLED, DECODED, DEDUCED, OCCLUDE
- Eight letters (2): COLLUDED, OCCLUDED
- Nine letters (1): BECLOUDED
Four answers are likely to be the ones standing between a good score and a complete one. BOUCLE is a looped yarn and the fabric woven from it. COULEE is a steep-sided ravine, a word that turns up far more in Canadian and American western geography than in ordinary speech. CELLULE is simply a small cell, and it is the sort of technical diminutive that solvers tend to reject on sight. BOCCE, the Italian lawn bowling game, is the one most people know but least expect to be accepted.
DECO and LOCO are worth noting as the two four-letter answers that are not obviously words in their own right, and both are accepted. EDUCE, meaning to draw out or elicit, is the five-letter entry most often missed.
Saturday’s puzzle, the Spelling Bee for August 15, had the center letter O with a single pangram, RADICCHIO, across a 47-word list.
Related Posts
