Today’s NYT Spelling Bee puzzle was a great example of how a familiar-looking letter set can still hide a surprisingly elegant pangram. At first glance, the letters felt very approachable, but finding the one word that brought everything together took a bit of patience and pattern spotting.

Today’s letter set

Center letter: V
Outer letters: A, E, I, L, P, T

As always, every valid word must include the center letter V, letters may be reused, and no letters outside this set are allowed.

How I Found Today’s Pangram

Whenever the center letter is V, I know I need to slow down and think structurally. V isn’t used as freely as many other letters, so I usually look for adjective or noun endings like -IVE, -ATIVE, or -ALIVE.

I started by testing shorter words such as vital, alive, and valet to understand how flexible the letter set was. That quickly suggested that longer -IVE words might be hiding in the puzzle. Once I focused on that pattern, everything clicked.

Pangram: PALLIATIVE

This word uses all seven letters:
P A L L I A T I V E

Palliative is a well-known medical term, commonly used to describe treatments that relieve symptoms rather than cure disease. It’s a perfect NYT Spelling Bee pangram—long, meaningful, and very satisfying to uncover once the pattern becomes clear.

How the Pangram Opened the Board

After identifying PALLIATIVE, the rest of the puzzle became much easier. I broke the pangram down into smaller chunks and searched for:

• Familiar adjectives and nouns

• Short everyday words built around V

• Four- and five-letter words hidden inside the longer form

This systematic breakdown helped me avoid random guessing and steadily increase my word count.

Today’s NYT Spelling Bee full word list

Below is a clean, organized list of accepted words that can be formed using today’s letters while following Spelling Bee rules.

 Pangram

• palliative

 6+ Letter Words

• palliative

• alleviate
• appetitive
• elevate
• levitate
• titivate
• aviate
• velvet
• vitiate

 5-Letter Words

• vital

• alive

• valet

• avail
• leave
• levee
• level
• peeve
• valve
• villa

4-Letter Words

• live

• veil

• vial

• evil
• lava
• lave
• pave
• vale
  vape
• veal
• veep
• vile

(Four-letter words are easy to miss, but they add up quickly.)

Strategy That Worked Today

Here’s what helped me solve today’s puzzle efficiently:

1. Focus on common suffixes – Words ending in -IVE are frequent when V is the center letter.

2. Test shorter words first – They reveal how flexible the letter set is.

3. Break the pangram apart – Long words are gold mines for smaller answers.

4. Don’t rush – This puzzle rewarded structure over speed.

Today’s Spelling Bee leaned more toward vocabulary recognition than brute-force guessing, which made it especially enjoyable.

Unlocking the Final Layers

The 19 December 2025 NYT Spelling Bee was a satisfying and well-balanced puzzle. The pangram PALLIATIVE felt fair, meaningful, and rewarding to discover, and once it was found, the rest of the word list followed naturally.

If you enjoy solving daily pangrams, sharpening your spelling skills, or competing with friends in real spelling-bee–style challenges, Spelling Better makes the experience even more fun with daily word lists, live battles, and vocabulary games.

Happy spelling—and see you tomorrow