Table of Contents

• Okay So I Basically Fell Into This One
• Why This Grid Made My Brain Sweat
• The Actual Words (Finally)
• Frequently Asked Questions

Okay So I Basically Fell Into This One

Here at WordFinder Tips, we like to pretend we’re strategic geniuses who plan every move on the honeycomb. Today? Not me. I typed “chat” out of pure boredom while waiting for my coffee to brew, and somehow that led me down a rabbit hole to the pangram. I didn’t earn this win, I stumbled into it like a raccoon finding an unlocked trash can. But hey, a win is a win, and now I’m here to walk you through it like I totally meant to do that.

Quick Puzzle Breakdown (No Spoilers)

• Difficulty Level: Medium-hard. This one has a sneaky double pangram, which the NYT Spelling Bee doesn’t hand out every day.
• Center Letter: The letter “H” sits in the middle, meaning every single valid word today must include it.
• Vowel Count: Two vowels are in play, plus one letter that acts like a vowel-adjacent troublemaker, giving you decent flexibility for word combos.

Why This Grid Made My Brain Sweat

The Letter Logic Nobody Warns You About

Today’s letters are a, c, e, l, o, t, and h in the center. That’s seven letters total, which is standard, but the combo is sneaky. You’ve got a lot of soft consonant sounds that blend together in weird ways. My brain kept wanting to make words with “th” and “ch” sounds because English loves throwing those digraphs at us constantly. Turns out that instinct actually paid off today, which almost never happens for me.

The Words That Made Me Question My Vocabulary

Let’s be real, some of today’s answers felt like the puzzle was showing off. Words like “cochlea” and “hellhole” popped up, and I genuinely paused and said “is that even allowed?” out loud to my empty kitchen. There’s also a chunk of shorter four-letter words hiding in plain sight, like “ache” and “echo,” that are easy to miss when you’re too busy hunting for something fancy. Honestly, the short words are where I lost the most points yesterday and almost lost today too.

The Actual Words (Finally)

Alright, no more stalling. Today’s puzzle has not one but two pangrams, which is a rare little gift from puzzle editor Sam Ezersky. The main pangram is chocolate, and the second, sneakier one is echolocate.

Let’s talk about “chocolate” for a second because it’s more interesting than you’d think. The word traces back to the Aztec word “xocolatl,” which roughly translates to “bitter water.” Spanish colonizers brought the word and the drink back to Europe in the 1500s, and it slowly morphed into the sugary word we use today. So every time you eat a chocolate bar, you’re technically saying “bitter water” without realizing it. Kind of poetic for something that ends up in ice cream.

The second pangram, “echolocate,” is the verb form of echolocation, the method bats and dolphins use to navigate by bouncing sound waves off objects. It’s a great example of how English smashes Greek roots together, “echo” meaning sound and “locate” meaning to find a place. Two totally separate words fused into one science-class favorite.

Beyond the pangrams, today’s answer list includes: ache, achoo, alcohol, aloha, athlete, attach, attache, cache, cachet, catch, catchall, chalet, challah, chat, chattel, cheat, cheetah, cloche, cloth, clothe, coach, cochlea, cochleae, coho, each, echo, etch, halal, hale, hall, halo, halt, hatch, hatchet, hate, hath, hatha, heal, health, heat, heath, heel, hell, hellcat, hellhole, hello, hole, holt, hooch, hoot, hotel, latch, lath, lathe, leach, lech, leech, lethal, loach, loath, loathe, loch, oath, tach, teach, tech, teeth, teethe, telehealth, that, thatch, thee, theta, tooth, and toothache.

Pro tip from someone who got lucky: whenever you spot “ch” or “th” in your letter set, brainstorm every common prefix and suffix combo first. Words like “attach,” “hatch,” “catch,” and “latch” share the same “-atch” ending pattern, and once you notice one, the others tend to follow. It’s basically a chain reaction of easy points.

If you’re chasing Queen Bee status, don’t sleep on words like “telehealth” or “hellhole.” They’re worth a chunk of points and easy to overlook because they look a little unusual sitting next to more common words like “hello” or “heat.”

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is today’s Spelling Bee pangram? There are actually two today, “chocolate” and “echolocate,” both using every letter in the grid at least once.
• Is there an S in today’s Spelling Bee answers? Nope, there’s no S in today’s letter set, so don’t waste time trying to pluralize anything.
• What is a good score for today’s puzzle? Anything above 70 points today is solid, since the word list is long and includes some genuinely tricky entries like “cochlea.”