“What is the plural distribution feature offered on your home page, and how do I use it?”

The most common way to form the plural of a noun in English is to add s at the end. You probably won’t ever see such a construction in Spelling Bee, however, since the editors appear to believe the resulting proliferation of plurals would make the puzzle too uninteresting. No Bee so far has ever included an s.

For this reason, it’s easy to forget to look for plural nouns that don’t end in s, which include everything from cacti to to mice to oxen to people to pupae. Our plural distribution grid breaks these down by length and first letter to make them easier to spot. Refer to this example for a puzzle with an unusual number of plurals, where you can see the distribution grid in action.

Please note that, in cases where the singular and plural forms of a noun are identical, such as aircraft or trout, we do not mark the word as plural. We also do not mark uncountable nouns, such as luggage or wheat, even if (as in the case of confetti) the word may be plural in its original language. An exception to this rule is graffiti, which in certain contexts can be considered a plural in English (with graffito as the singular).

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