Today’s NYT Spelling Bee uses seven letters with N at the center. The outer ring: A, D, H, I, O, T. Every word must contain N.
Three hints before the pangram:
Hint 1: Today’s pangram names something a country becomes – the condition of being a recognized, independent nation.
Hint 2: It starts and ends with the same letter.
Hint 3: Ten letters, and you have all of them on the board.
Today’s Pangram
NATIONHOOD uses all seven letters: N, A, T, I, O, H, D. The suffix -hood converts a noun into an abstraction of collective identity – childhood, manhood, neighborhood. NATIONHOOD entered English in the 19th century as newly formed states needed a word for what they had achieved or were still fighting to achieve. The concept remains contested: statehood is legal recognition, nationhood is cultural and psychological.
All 42 Answers – NYT Spelling Bee August 29, 2026
| 10 Letters |
| annotation initiation intonation nationhood ★ |
| 8 Letters |
| addition donation notation |
| 7 Letters |
| annatto |
| 6 Letters |
| anoint attain natant nation notion tahini tannin tattoo |
| 5 Letters |
| dhoti ditto hatha idiot ninth taint titan tooth |
| 4 Letters |
| anti data dint doth hath hint hoot into iota oath onto than that thin tint toad toon toot |
Scoring: Genius = 129 pts | Queen Bee = 184 pts (all 42 words)
A few words worth knowing. ANNATTO is a natural food dye derived from the seeds of the achiote tree, common in Latin American and Caribbean cooking – it gives cheddar and butter their orange tint. NATANT is a heraldic term meaning swimming or floating horizontally, used to describe fish or aquatic creatures in coat-of-arms design. DHOTI is the traditional South Asian garment – a length of unstitched cloth wrapped around the waist and legs – worn by men across the subcontinent for centuries.
The no-E, no-U constraint makes this a tighter board than it first appears. The cluster of double-N words (TANNIN, ANNOTATION, INTONATION) and double-T words (DITTO, ATTAIN, TATTOO) rewards solvers who think about letter repetition rather than letter variety. NOTATION and INTONATION share seven of their eight or ten letters; finding one often leads to the other.
The Spelling Bee resets daily at midnight Eastern Time. Play today’s NYT Spelling Bee on the New York Times site.
