If you love unraveling the daily New York Times Spelling Bee grid as much as I do, today’s hive offered a wonderfully satisfying challenge. With N as the center letter — the one we must use in every word — and the surrounding letters V, R, C, U, G, I, the puzzle provided just enough constraints to force creativity while still leaving plenty of room for discovery.

Today’s pangram, CURVING, set the tone for the entire grid. Here’s a breakdown of how I approached the puzzle, the strategy that helped me unlock the longest word, and the complete word list I found.

NYT Bee solving steps

 Step 1: Start with Common Letter Pairings

Whenever I begin a Spelling Bee challenge, I look for natural letter clusters:

• IN, UN, GR, CR, UR, IR

• And consonant pairs that often appear together like NG, NV, NC, RG, RV

With N as the mandatory center letter, combinations such as -ING, -ING, -NGR, and -UNC immediately came to mind.

This was the first clue that the grid might contain words ending with -ing. And indeed, today’s pangram fits that pattern beautifully.

 Step 2: Identify the Word Family Patterns

With these letters, several patterns naturally emerge:

• VERB + ING: Words like curving

• UN- prefix: uncing (not valid), but seeing the pattern helps trigger more ideas

• GR- and CR- starters: These are useful in English morphology and were essential for today

Exploring these families helped me quickly rule out impossible combinations and focus on plausible ones.

 Step 3: Spotting the Pangram — CURVING

Once I saw the cluster CURV- appear in my mind, everything clicked. Adding -ING brought me to the full pangram:

CURVING

It uses all seven letters, satisfies the rule of including the center letter N, and is a perfectly valid English verb. Finding the pangram early always unlocks confidence and momentum for identifying the shorter words.

 Step 4: Listing All Valid Words

With the pangram secured, I shifted into scanning mode — systematically testing all letter combinations around the center letter.

Here are all the valid words I found for today’s Spelling Bee puzzle:

All Possible Words for Today’s Hive

Pangram

• CURVING (PANGRAM)

• CRINGING
• CUNNING
• GIGGING
• GINNING
• GRINNING
• GUNNING
• INCURRING
• INURING
• INURNING
• RIGGING
• RINGING
• RUINING
• RUNNING
• UNRIGGING

6-Letter Words

• CURING

• GIVING

• INNING
• NIGIRI
• RICING
• URGING
• VIRGIN

5-Letter Words

• RUNIC

• RUING

• INCUR

• CUING

• ICING
• INURN
• RICIN
• UNRIG

4-Letter Words

• RUNG

• RING

• GRIN

• GURN

• URIC

• RUIN

(Your final accepted list will depend on NYT’s internal dictionary, which excludes many archaic, slang, or scientific terms.)

A Look Back at the Challenge

Today’s hive offered a refreshing balance — not overly restrictive but requiring careful observation to uncover the pangram. The presence of rich consonant clusters (CR, GR, NG, RV, NC) was both a hint and a challenge, making the discovery of CURVING all the more rewarding.

The best part of puzzles like today’s is how they stretch your pattern-recognition muscles; once you see the rhythm of English morphology, the hive starts to open up beautifully.

If you solved it too, let me know: Did you find the pangram early, or was it the last word you discovered?

Happy spelling!