NYT Spelling Bee puzzle solver with word list

Today’s Spelling Bee puzzle gave us a clean, elegant letter set that looked deceptively simple at first glance. From the image, the center letter is R, and the surrounding letters are:

A, F, I, L, O, W

As always, every valid word must:

• Be at least four letters long

• Include R

• Use only the given letters

• Reuse letters if needed

My goal, as usual, was to find the pangram first — the word that uses all seven letters — because it unlocks the rest of the board mentally and makes the puzzle far more approachable.

How I Spotted the Pangram

I started by scanning for natural clusters. The combination of A, I, R, F, L, O, W immediately suggested something atmospheric or physical. When you see FLOW and AIR in the same grid, your brain should light up a little.

The breakthrough came when I mentally stacked those two ideas together:

AIR + FLOW = AIRFLOW

That was it.
AIRFLOW uses all seven letters, includes the center R, and is a clean, common English word. Pangram found ✅

Once you have the pangram, the rest of the solve becomes a process of systematically breaking it apart and recombining pieces.

Strategy After the Pangram

With AIRFLOW as the anchor, I focused on:

• Shorter -OR and -AR endings

• Plural possibilities using repeated letters

• Verbs built from FLOW, ROAR, and RAIL

• Less obvious forms like AWFUL-adjacent constructions (even if not valid here)

Working clockwise around the hive helped me avoid missing combinations, and I double-checked that every word genuinely required the R.

Full Word List for Today’s Puzzle

Here is the complete set of valid words formed from today’s letters:

4-letter words

• AFAR

• AFRO
• ARIA
• ARIL
• FAIR
• FORA
• LAIR
• LIAR
• LIRA
• ORAL
• RAIL
• RIAL
• RIFF
• RILL
• ROAR
• ROIL
• ROLL
• ROOF

5-letter words

• ARROW
• FARRO
• FLAIR
• FLOOR
• FLORA
• FRIAR
• FRAIL

6-letter words

• AFFAIR
• FARROW
• FLORAL
• RAFFIA

7+-letter word 

• AIRFLOW (PANGRAM)

• AIRFOIL
• FOOFARAW
• RIFFRAFF
• WALLAROO
• WARRIOR

(Note: repeated letters are allowed, which is why forms like ROARER are valid.)

Puzzle Reflections

This was a great example of a Spelling Bee puzzle where recognizing compound ideas — in this case, air and flow — makes all the difference. If you ever feel stuck, look for:

• Natural word pairings

• Physical or sensory terms

• Verbs hiding inside nouns

Finding the pangram early doesn’t just boost your score; it reshapes how you see the entire board.

If you solved this one differently or spotted a word I missed, that’s half the fun — every Spelling Bee puzzle rewards a slightly different way of thinking. Happy buzzing