The grid for 31 August 2026 puts L at the centre, surrounded by R, A, Y, O, B, D.
If you've been following along this week, you'll spot the shape of this one immediately. It's an adverb grid — and it hands out two pangrams, including the second perfect pangram we've seen in six days.
Here's how I worked through it.
Step oneReading the grid
- L in the centre means -LY.That's the first and biggest observation. L is the anchor of the most productive adverb suffix in English, and with Y sitting right there in the ring, every adjective I could build became a candidate for a second, longer answer.
- BAD+ LYBADLY
- ODD+ LYODDLY
- ROYAL+ LYROYALLY
- Double L is doing enormous work.Repeats are allowed, and LL appears in roughly a third of today's answers: BALL, DOLL, ROLL, ALLY, RALLY, DOLLAR, BOLLARD. If you're not testing doubled L on an L-centred grid, you're missing a huge chunk of the board.
- Only A and O for true vowels.Y picks up the slack, which is why so many answers end in it rather than using it mid-word. That's a useful constraint — it tells you where Y is likely to sit before you start guessing.
Step twoFinding both pangrams
The pangram needs all seven: A, B, D, L, O, R, Y.
I started, as usual, with the easy stuff and then read the gap. BROAD was on my list early — B, R, O, A, D. Five of the seven. Missing L and Y.
- BROAD five of the seven letters
- L + Y missing together · in that order
- BROADLY seven letters · seven distinct
Every one of the seven letters used exactly once — the grid itself, simply rearranged into a word. The second one this week after CHUNKED on Tuesday.
The same move applied to a different root. ADORABLE is out — no E in the grid — but drop the E and take the adverb. Eight letters, all seven present.
Most pangrams pad themselves with repeated letters. A perfect pangram doesn't have that luxury, which is exactly what makes it worth noticing.
The full word list
Grouped by length. Tap any word to mark it found — it counts towards your score above.
Answers hidden — no accidental spoilers
The ones people miss
- BALLADRYThe art of writing ballads. Eight letters, not a pangram, and almost universally overlooked.
- BOLLARDThe short post on a dock or pavement that stops vehicles. A Bee regular worth memorising.
- BOLAA throwing weapon of weighted cords, used in South America.
- DROLLYAmusingly dry. If you found DROLL, you owed yourself this one.
- BOLLThe seed pod of a cotton plant, as in boll weevil.
The takeaway
Five puzzles, five suffixes: -ING, -ITY, -HOOD, and now -LY twice over. The lesson has been the same every time, and today it's at its clearest.
Build your short words first. Then look at which letters they're missing, and ask which suffix uses exactly those. BROAD was missing L and Y. There is essentially one thing you can do with L and Y, and it takes about two seconds.
The pangram is rarely a word you have to invent. It's usually a word you already found, wearing an ending you hadn't tried.
Back tomorrow with the next grid.