Tylogram Solver : Glossary



The following terms have specific meanings to players of the daily online New York Times Spelling Bee. One or two are used primarily by commenters in the Comments section of the Times Wordplay blog.

bingo
A puzzle in which the solution set contains at least one word beginning with each of the seven letters in the hive. See this example. (Coined by Wordplay commenter qatburger.)
center letter
The letter that appears in the center cell of the day's hive. The center letter must appear in every answer.
complementary pangrams
A set of two or more pangrams comprising the same seven unique letters. The entire set will always appear in the solutions list for that hive, no matter what the center letter. See this example.
compound
A valid word constructed by concatenating two or more shorter words, e.g., "bluebird," "pothole," or "backhand." (Our definition of compounds is fairly strict. Please refer to questions 14 and 15 in the F.A.Q. for more information.)
disallowed
Any word known to have been excluded from past solution sets for the daily Spelling Bee.
hive
The set of seven letters forming each day's puzzle.
pangram
A word which uses each of the seven letters in the hive at least once. Every daily Spelling Bee is guaranteed to contain at least one pangram.
perfect pangram
A seven-letter pangram — i.e., a word which uses each letter in the hive exactly once. See this example.
solution set
The complete set of words that can be formed using different combinations of letters from the hive. (A given solution set may grow larger when disallowed words are included.)

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