The following terms have specific meanings to players of the daily online New York Times Spelling Bee. One or two are used primarily by commenters in the Comments section of the Times Wordplay blog.

Amazing

The third highest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 50% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point). As a handy rule of thumb, you can estimate the Queen Bee score to within one point by doubling Amazing.

Beeatrice

The official Spelling Bee mascot. When you reach Genius, she pops up to congratulate you wearing a mortarboard. When you reach Queen Bee, she pops up wearing a crown.

Beginner

The lowest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to zero points.

bingo

A puzzle in which the solution set contains at least one word beginning with each of the seven letters in the hive. See this example. (Coined by Times Wordplay commenter qatburger.)

center letter

The letter that appears in the center cell of the day’s hive. The center letter must appear in every answer.

complementary pangrams

A set of two or more pangrams comprising the same seven unique letters. The entire set will always appear in the solutions list for that hive, no matter what the center letter. See this example.

compound

A valid word constructed by concatenating two or more shorter words, e.g., bluebird, pothole or timepiece. (Our definition of what qualifies as a compound could fairly be called quirky. Please see this F.A.Q. entry for more information.)

debut

Any word making its first-ever appearance in a given day’s solution set.

disallowed

Any word known to have been excluded from past solution sets for the daily Spelling Bee.

Ezersky, Sam

Editor of the daily online Spelling Bee puzzle.

Genius

The second highest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 70% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

Good

The fourth lowest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 8% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

Good Start

The second lowest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 2% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

Great

The fourth highest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 40% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

hive

The set of seven letters forming each day’s puzzle.

Hivemind

The community of Spelling Bee fans on Twitter who love to share hints daily and commiserate about egregious omissions in the puzzle.

Longo, Frank

Creator and editor of the original print version of Spelling Bee.

mashing keys

The act of trying letter combinations almost at random to see if they will be accepted as valid words.

Moving Up

The third lowest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 5% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

Nice

The fifth highest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 25% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

pangram

A word which uses each of the seven letters in the hive at least once. Every daily Spelling Bee is guaranteed to contain at least one pangram.

perfect pangram

A seven-letter pangram—i.e., a word which uses each letter in the hive exactly once. See this example.

plural

The form of a noun used to indicate a quantity greater than one, e.g. cats for cat, or mice for mouse. (Please see this F.A.Q. entry for more information on how we classify plurals.)

print version

The original, print-only edition of Spelling Bee, by Frank Longo, which appears weekly in The New York Times Magazine. In this version, words must be at least five letters long to count, and players are allowed to judge the validity of entries for themselves. Sometimes also referred to as the Sunday Bee.

QB

See Queen Bee.

Queen Bee

The highest rank in Spelling Bee, achieved by finding every word in the puzzle. Sometimes used to refer to the total number of points available in a puzzle.

Shunn, William

Creator of Spelling Bee Solver. See this page for more information.

Solid

The fifth lowest rank in Spelling Bee, equivalent to 15% of Queen Bee (rounded to the nearest point).

solution set

The complete set of words that can be formed using different combinations of letters from the hive. (A given solution set may grow larger when disallowed words are included.)

Sunday Bee

See print version.