Today’s NYT Spelling Bee for August 31, 2026 has two pangrams: ADORABLY and BROADLY. The center letter is L. There are 59 words worth 270 points.
Today’s letters: L (center), A, B, D, O, R, Y
Pangrams: ADORABLY (8 letters, ★), BROADLY (7 letters, ★)
8-Letter Words – 39 points
ADORABLY ★, BALLADRY, BALLYARD, LOBLOLLY
7-Letter Words – 56 points
BALLBOY, BOLLARD, BROADLY ★, LOYALLY, ODDBALL, ROLLBAR, ROYALLY
6-Letter Words – 66 points
BALDLY, BALLAD, BLABBY, BLOBBY, BOLDLY, DOLLAR, DRABLY, DROLLY, DROOLY, LORDLY, ORALLY
5-Letter Words – 90 points
ALLAY, ALLOY, BADLY, BLOOD, DALLY, DOLLY, DOLOR, DROLL, DROOL, DRYLY, LABOR, LOBBY, LORDY, LORRY, LOYAL, ODDLY, RALLY, ROYAL
4-Letter Words – 19 points
ABLY, ALLY, BALD, BALL, BLAB, BLOB, BOLA, BOLD, BOLL, BOLO, DOLL, LADY, LARD, LOAD, LOBO, LOLL, LORD, ORAL, ROLL
The two notable 8-letter non-pangrams reward niche vocabulary. BALLADRY – the craft or tradition of composing ballads – is a genuine dictionary entry but one that rarely surfaces in everyday use. BALLYARD, primarily North American baseball usage for a stadium, is the kind of compound the Spelling Bee occasionally plants to catch players who think only in standard dictionary terms. LOBLOLLY earns its place through double ambiguity: it names a species of Southern pine tree common across the American Southeast, but also an older English term for a thick gruel – two definitions with no obvious shared ancestry.
BROADLY is the easier pangram to find for most solvers; its B-R-O structure is a natural path through the day’s letter set. ADORABLY rewards solvers who think in adverb form – the suffix -ABLY is a productive one for this particular combination of consonants and vowels, but it takes lateral thinking to reach it from the honeycomb rather than working letter-by-letter.
The L-center set is unusually productive at the 4-letter tier. Nineteen 4-letter words is a high count; solvers who grind the short words early will find themselves well-positioned before attempting the longer entries.
Yesterday’s full answer list is in the NYT Spelling Bee answers for August 30, 2026. The Spelling Bee resets at midnight Eastern Time and is free to play on The New York Times Games page.
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