Today’s NYT Spelling Bee puzzle (August 22, 2025) came with the required center letter C and the outer letters N, I, R, M, F, O. At first glance, the set looked promising: several strong consonants paired with just enough vowels to build something meaningful.

After exploring combinations of smaller words, the pangram finally revealed itself: CONFIRM.

How I Found the Pangram

My approach usually starts with short, obvious words to build momentum. With C as the required letter, I began by thinking of common “co-” and “con-” starters.

• I quickly spotted small words like coin, icon, and corn.

• Building from those, I found comic and conic.

• Then I leaned into “con-” + endings, and words like conic and conform came up.

• Finally, the breakthrough came when “con-” + “firm” clicked—forming CONFIRM, the perfect pangram that ties today’s puzzle together.

It was a satisfying discovery since the word itself even feels like an answer—almost as if the puzzle were asking me to “confirm” the solution!

 Pangram Today: Confirm

How to guess pangram in NYT Spelling Bee

Here’s a breakdown of the words I found (always including the center letter C):

4-Letter Words

• Coin

• Icon

• Corn

• Firm

• Corm

• Coir

• Foci

• Croc

5-Letter Words

• Comic

• Ionic

• Conic

• Micro

• Cirri

• Cocci

• Croon

• Mimic

• Ricin

6-Letter Words

• Inform

• Micron

• Coffin

• Cocoon

• Common

• Formic

• Iconic

• Ironic

• Noncom

• Rococo

• Romcom

7+-Letter Words

• Confirm  (pangram)

• Conform

• Microform

• Micromini

• Morocco

• Moronic

• Omicron

Reflections on Today’s Puzzle

This puzzle was deceptively compact. With only two vowels (I and O), word formation was more limited than usual. But that limitation also highlighted the importance of prefixes like con- and co-, which opened the door to longer words.

The joy of today’s game was the neatness of the pangram: confirm. It felt inevitable once I started exploring the “firm” fragment with the “con-” prefix. Along the way, words like comic, ionic, and inform provided stepping stones that led me toward the solution.

Lessons from the Letters

Today’s puzzle leaned toward medium difficulty—enough short words to keep players engaged, but with a pangram that required piecing together parts methodically.

The pangram confirm was especially rewarding, not just because it used six different letters, but because of its playful self-referential quality. It was as if the Spelling Bee were nodding at me to confirm that I’d solved it right.

Daily Tip: Keep an eye out for common fragments like -ic, -on, and con- in puzzles with heavy consonant clusters. They often hold the key to unlocking the pangram.