I Built a Free Spelling Bee Solver and Analysis Tool — Here’s What It Does

我开发了一款免费的 Spelling Bee 解题与分析工具——它能做些什么？

So I’ve been playing the NYT Spelling Bee for a while now, and like probably a lot of you, I got tired of staring at those seven letters feeling like I’m missing obvious words. I’d sit there for 20 minutes, convince myself I’d found everything, check the answers, and realize I missed like 15 words including a pangram. Every single time. So I decided to just build something myself. Not another janky tool that barely works — a proper site that actually helps you understand the puzzle, not just cheat your way through it. Something that gives you the answers when you want them but also shows you the interesting patterns and stats behind each puzzle. It’s called SpellingBee Solver and it’s live at spellingbeesolver.dev. Completely free, no sign-up, no ads, no nonsense.

我玩《纽约时报》的 Spelling Bee 游戏已经有一段时间了。和你们中的许多人一样，我厌倦了盯着那七个字母发呆，总觉得漏掉了显而易见的单词。我会在那儿坐上 20 分钟，说服自己已经找出了所有单词，结果一查答案，却发现漏掉了 15 个词，甚至还包括一个全字母短语（pangram）。每次都是这样。所以我决定自己动手做一个工具。它不是那种勉强能用的劣质产品，而是一个真正能帮你理解谜题、而不仅仅是作弊的专业网站。它既能在你需要时提供答案，又能展示每个谜题背后的有趣模式和统计数据。这个网站叫 SpellingBee Solver，网址是 spellingbeesolver.dev。完全免费，无需注册，没有广告，没有任何花哨的套路。

What Made Me Build This

我为什么开发这个工具

Honestly, I tried a bunch of the existing solver sites out there. Some were okay, but most of them either had terrible UI, were super slow, or just showed you the word list and called it a day. I wanted something more — something that doesn’t just give answers but actually helps you see the puzzle differently. Like, have you ever wondered which center letter shows up most often? Or how today’s puzzle compares to past puzzles in terms of difficulty? Or whether the same set of letters has ever been used before? That kind of stuff is genuinely interesting to me, and I couldn’t find a single site that showed all of it in one place. So I built it myself. Took a while, lots of late nights, lots of “why is this API returning 500 errors” moments, but it’s finally at a point where I’m actually proud of it.

老实说，我试过市面上很多现有的解题网站。有些还凑合，但大多数要么界面糟糕，要么速度极慢，要么只是列出单词表就完事了。我想要的是更多东西——不仅仅是给出答案，而是能帮你以不同的视角看待谜题。比如，你有没有想过哪个中心字母出现的频率最高？今天的谜题与过去的谜题相比难度如何？或者这组字母以前是否出现过？这些内容对我来说非常有趣，但我找不到一个能把这些信息整合在一起的网站。所以我自己动手做了。这花了不少时间，熬过很多深夜，经历过无数次“为什么这个 API 返回 500 错误”的崩溃时刻，但现在它终于达到了让我引以为傲的程度。

What the Site Actually Does

网站的核心功能

Let me walk you through the main features because there’s quite a bit packed in here. 让我带你了解一下主要功能，因为这里面包含的内容相当丰富。

🐝 Today’s Puzzle — Full Breakdown

🐝 今日谜题 — 全面解析

The Today’s Puzzle page is where most people will land. It shows the current day’s puzzle with all the answers, but here’s what makes it different from just looking at a list: “今日谜题”页面是大多数人访问的入口。它展示了当天的谜题及所有答案，但与单纯的单词列表相比，它有以下不同之处：

• Official answers clearly labeled — You know exactly which words are the NYT official answers. 官方答案明确标注 — 你能清楚地知道哪些词是《纽约时报》的官方答案。
• Pangrams highlighted — Both regular pangrams and perfect pangrams (using all 7 letters) are called out because let’s be real, those are the ones that matter most. 高亮显示全字母短语 — 普通全字母短语和完美全字母短语（使用全部 7 个字母）都会被特别标出，因为说实话，这些才是最重要的。
• Points breakdown — You can see exactly how many points each word is worth and what the total possible score is. 分数拆解 — 你可以清楚地看到每个单词的分值以及总分。
• Genius threshold — It shows you what score you need to hit Genius level, which is honestly kind of motivating when you’re playing. 天才门槛 — 它会显示达到“天才”（Genius）级别所需的分数，这在玩游戏时确实很能激励人。
• Words by first letter — A nice visual breakdown showing how many words start with each letter. 按首字母分类 — 直观地展示以每个字母开头的单词数量。
• Points by word length — Because 4-letter words are worth 1 point but longer words can rack up serious points. 按单词长度计分 — 因为 4 个字母的单词只值 1 分，但更长的单词可以获得更多分数。
• Spoiler reveal button — If you just want hints without seeing all answers immediately, you can reveal them on your own terms. 剧透揭示按钮 — 如果你只想获得提示而不希望立即看到所有答案，可以按需揭示。

I personally use this page after I’ve finished playing for the day, just to see what I missed and how close I was to Genius. 我个人会在每天玩完游戏后使用这个页面，看看自己漏掉了哪些词，以及离“天才”级别还有多远。

🔍 The Solver — Your Personal Word Finder

🔍 解题器 — 你的个人单词搜索工具

The Solver page is the tool I probably use the most. You can: “解题器”页面可能是我用得最多的工具。你可以：

• Enter your 7 letters using an interactive honeycomb layout (same visual style as the actual Spelling Bee game). 使用交互式蜂巢布局输入 7 个字母（与《Spelling Bee》游戏本身的视觉风格一致）。
• Or just type them in if you prefer a text input. 或者如果你更喜欢文本输入，也可以直接打字。
• Hit solve and it finds every valid word from a dictionary of over 200,000 words. 点击“解题”，它会从超过 20 万个单词的词典中找出所有有效词汇。
• One-click autofill — There’s an “Autofill Today’s Puzzle” button that pulls today’s letters straight from the API so you don’t even have to type them. 一键自动填充 — 有一个“自动填充今日谜题”按钮，可以直接从 API 获取当天的字母，连打字都省了。

The solver uses the TWL06 tournament Scrabble dictionary, so it’s finding words that are actually valid in competitive word games. It’s fast too — results come back in under a second usually. I built the honeycomb input because honestly, typing letters into a plain text box felt wrong for a game that’s so visual. The hexagonal layout just feels right. 该解题器使用 TWL06 锦标赛拼字游戏词典，因此它找到的单词在竞技类单词游戏中都是有效的。它的速度也很快，通常不到一秒就能返回结果。我设计蜂巢输入界面是因为，对于这样一个视觉感很强的游戏，在纯文本框里输入字母感觉很不对劲。六边形布局才更有感觉。

📊 Stats That Are Actually Interesting

📊 真正有趣的统计数据

The stats page is probably my favorite part of the whole site. It’s not just “here are some numbers” — it’s the kind of stuff that makes you go “huh, I never thought about that.” 统计页面可能是我整个网站中最喜欢的部分。它不仅仅是“列出一些数字”，而是那种会让你感叹“咦，我从没想过这一点”的内容。

• Hardest and easiest puzzles — Which dates had the most and fewest answers. 最难和最简单的谜题 — 哪一天的答案最多，哪一天最少。
• Most common center letters — Spoiler: some letters show up way more than others as the required center letter. 最常见的中心字母 — 剧透：有些字母作为中心字母出现的频率远高于其他字母。
• Letter frequency analysis — How often each letter from A to Z appears in puzzles, both as center letters and as valid letters. 字母频率分析 — 从 A 到 Z 的每个字母在谜题中出现的频率，包括作为中心字母和作为有效字母的情况。
• How long are words in the Bee — Distribution charts showing word lengths across all puzzles ever. 单词长度分布 — 展示所有谜题中单词长度的分布图。
• Average word length trends — Because some puzzles just seem to have longer words. 平均单词长度趋势 — 因为有些谜题的单词似乎普遍更长。
• Pangram statistics — How often do puzzles have 1 pangram vs 2 vs 3. 全字母短语统计 — 谜题中出现 1 个、2 个或 3 个全字母短语的频率。

There’s something oddly satisfying about seeing the patterns emerge when you look at hundreds of puzzles worth of data. Like, did you know that some center letters have only appeared a handful of times? The bar charts make that really obvious. 当你查看数百个谜题的数据时，看到模式浮现出来有一种奇妙的满足感。比如，你知道有些中心字母只出现过寥寥几次吗？柱状图让这一点变得非常直观。

📅 Archive — Browse Any Past Puzzle

📅 归档 — 浏览往期谜题

The archive page lets you look up any puzzle by date. You can browse through and see answers, stats, and analysis for any day going back months. It’s great for: 归档页面允许你按日期查找任何谜题。你可以浏览并查看过去几个月内任何一天的答案、统计数据和分析。它非常适合：

• Checking what you missed on a puzzle you played days ago. 检查几天前玩过的谜题中漏掉了什么。
• Comparing different puzzles to see how they stack up. 比较不同的谜题，看看它们的难度对比。
• Just browsing through and geeking out on the stats. 单纯地浏览并沉迷于这些统计数据。

There’s a date picker that makes navigation super easy, and each puzzle in the archive has the same full breakdown as the today page. 页面配有一个日期选择器，导航非常方便，归档中的每个谜题都拥有与“今日谜题”页面相同的全面解析。

Some Cool Things I Discovered While Building This

开发过程中我发现的一些趣事

Building this taught me a lot about the Spelling Bee that I never noticed as a player: 开发这个工具让我学到了很多作为玩家时从未注意到的关于 Spelling Bee 的知识：

• Some letter combinations repeat — You’d think with 7 letters the combinations would be endless, but the same letters (or very similar sets) do come back. The site actually shows you “Haven’t I seen these letters before?” with the history of when each letter combination appeared. 某些字母组合会重复 — 你可能觉得 7 个字母的组合是无穷无尽的，但同样的字母（或非常相似的组合）确实会再次出现。网站甚至会通过显示历史记录来提醒你：“我是不是以前见过这些字母？”
• The difficulty varies wildly — Some puzzles have 20-odd answers and some have 60+. That’s a 3x difference in how many words you need to find. The percentile rankings on each puzzle show you exactly where it falls compared to all others. Genius is not always equally hard. 难度差异巨大 — 有些谜题只有 20 多个答案，而有些则有 60 多个。这意味着你需要寻找的单词数量有 3 倍的差距。每个谜题的百分位排名能让你清楚地知道它在所有谜题中的难度位置。“天才”级别并不总是同样难达到。