Spelling Bee

Generates NYT Spelling Bee puzzles

Rules

Spelling Bee puzzles present solvers with 7 letters in a circle, with one letter in the middle. The game is to identify as many words as possible using only these letters, which can be repeated, and where the letter in the center must be used.

Example

Each word is worth one point, and words using all seven letters are worth 3 points.

Generally, underneath the puzzle there's a scale saying "XX points is good, YY points is great, ZZ points is genius". The list of answers is printed in next week's issue.

For the purposes of generating puzzles, a puzzle is considered "valid" if it has at least 10 answers, to weed out puzzles with too few answers, and if there is at least one answer that uses every letter, because finding the 3-pointer is best part.

Runtime

Without parallelism, generating 7-letter puzzles takes about 5 and a half hours, and generates 51912 unique puzzles.

Results

The list of all valid puzzles is here: https://storage.googleapis.com/spelling-bee/ls-7.txt

The name of the puzzle is the letters in the puzzle, sorted A-Z, then rotated so that the required letter is first.

A puzzle with letters R, T, D, A, S, I, and the required center letter E is named by the letters in the puzzle, sorted (adeirst), then rotated so it starts with e (eirstad).

So the answers to that puzzle are at: https://storage.googleapis.com/spelling-bee/eirstad.txt

The last line of the file is the total number of points for that puzzle.

Findings

Longest answers

48 puzzles have an answer with 15 letters, all of which are 3-point answers.

7 unconsciousness
7 superstructures
7 nonintervention
7 interconnection
7 inconveniencing
7 inconsistencies
7 consciousnesses
6 nationalization

Most popular answers

The most popular answer is "deeded", which is found in 3630 different puzzles. Basically, any puzzle that has "e" and "d" in it, where either "e" or "d" is the required letter.

3630 deeded
3569 sissies
3569 sises
3516 serer
3516 seers
 ...

Least popular answers

62 different words are only found once in all the puzzles.

Nearly all of these are 3-point answers using all the letters in the puzzle. Exceptions come from puzzles without enough answers to be valid, or answers like chintz where the only longer answer is chintzy which is a 3-point answer.

1 backward
1 bigotry
1 blindfold
1 bloodhound
1 bobwhite
1 bullhorn
1 bumpkin
1 burdock
1 chintz
1 chintzy
1 crudity
1 dizzy
1 dogfight
1 drawback
1 equinox
1 exorcize
1 forklift
1 fortify
1 frigidity
1 fullback
1 girlhood
1 gluttony
1 gryphon
1 halfback
1 helpful
1 homepage
1 homophobia
1 hoodwink
1 horribly
1 hunchback
1 hurtful
1 imbroglio
1 invincibly
1 jackpot
1 jollity
1 jovial
1 jovially
1 judicial
1 kazoo
1 liturgy
1 luxury
1 menfolk
1 mindful
1 monthly
1 mortify
1 mythology
1 orthodoxy
1 pettifog
1 prodigy
1 public
1 publicly
1 quandary
1 quickly
1 rhombi
1 rhomboid
1 truthful
1 truthfully
1 unkempt
1 unmindful
1 wakeful
1 windfall
1 withhold

Puzzles with the most answers

The puzzle eirstad has the most answers, at 456. Interestingly, deeded is an answer in this puzzle, and #3 in the list.

456 eirstad
445 eiprsta
440 eprstad
440 einrsta
439 elprsta
...

Puzzles worth the most total points:

The puzzle einrsta (#4 on the list of most answers) has the most total points available, because it contains a lot 3-point answers.

The puzzle with the most answers, eirstad, has the second-most available points.

504 einrsta
484 eirstad
484 staeinr
484 taeinrs
482 einrstd
...

Puzzles with the fewest answers

There are 563 puzzles with only 10 answers, among them:

10 abcdkrw
10 abcfhkl
10 abdgotu
10 abehitu
10 abeiotv
...

Puzzles worth the fewest total points:

517 puzzles only have 12 points.

12 points is the fewest possible points for a valid puzzle, since every puzzle must have 10 answers and at least one of them must be worth 3 points.

12 abcfhkl
12 abdgotu
12 abehitu
12 abeiotv
12 aceiloz
...

Puzzles that have only 10 answers worth more than 12 points must include multiple 3-point answers.