Spelling Bee Scoring — Points, Pangrams and Genius
Scoring is easy to memorize and easy to misread on a big hive. Length is the base. Pangrams get a flat bonus. Ranks are fractions of the total.
How to use spelling bee scoring
- Score 4-letter words as 1.
- Score longer words as their length.
- Add 7 if the word uses all seven letters.
The point table
A 4-letter word scores 1 point, not 4. Any longer word scores 1 point per letter, so a 5-letter word is 5 and a 9-letter word is 9. A pangram then adds 7, regardless of length.
That bonus is why players hunt pangrams early. An 8-letter pangram is 15 points. Four ordinary 4-letter words are 4 points together.
Worked example
Sample hive, not a newspaper puzzle: center I, outer letters D, G, M, N, R and U. On HiveMate’s common-word list this hive has 48 words, 1 pangram and a maximum of 231 points. Genius is 162.
The pangram is DRUMMING. Eight letters plus the 7-point bonus is 15. It uses every letter and repeats M. A non-pangram such as MURMURING is simply 9, its length, because it does not use all seven letters.
Maximum, Genius, Queen Bee
Add every word’s points and you have the maximum. Queen Bee means you reached it. Genius means you reached 70 percent, rounded up to the next point when the product is not whole. The other rank names sit at 2, 5, 8, 15, 25, 40 and 50 percent.
Frequently asked questions
Why is a 4-letter word not worth 4?
The puzzle treats the shortest allowed words as a token point so the longer vocabulary decides the rank.
Does a perfect pangram score more than a normal one?
Only because of its length. The bonus is still +7. A 7-letter pangram scores 14. A longer pangram scores more before the same bonus.
Related tools
HiveMate can include dictionary words a newspaper puzzle would skip. It is not an official answer key.