Spelling Bee Assistant is an add-on for Spelling Bee, the New York Times’ popular word puzzle. It’s packed with features that will boost your playing experience.

Follow your progress, see what lies ahead of you and if you want to, get a hint or two. Eventually, when you run out of ideas, reveal today’s answers - no more waiting until the next day!

Spelling Bee Assistant is a great improvement for this excellent game and it won’t spoil the fun. Promised!

Installation

By installing this software you agree to the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Browser extension

The browser extension loads the assistant along with the Spelling Bee website.

It is available for Chrome, Edge and Opera.

Which data does the extension access?
Bookmarklet

If your device or browser doesn’t support the extension, you can try the bookmarklet instead. It will start the assistant with a mouse click.

To install, drag the amber badge to your browser’s bookmark menu.

I want to install Spelling Bee Assistant on a mobile device.

Feature Overview

The main panel

All tools in the main panel work in the same fashion; they show you how many items you’ve found so far (✓), how many are still in the pot (?) and the sum thereof (∑).
- Score represents your all-over progress for both, words and points.
- Letter count groups the terms by word length.
- First letter groups them by their first letter.
- First two letters is similar, but obviously, it's more revealing.
- Pangrams shows, well... the number of pangrams.
Greyed out lines indicate that all terms in a row have been found.
The Assistant menu

Show Assistant lets you show or hide the main panel. Score, Letter count, First letter, First two letters and Pangrams do the same for each section.

The Progress Bar is a visual indicator of your all-over progress.

The Grid is a matrix grouping the terms by first letter and word length.

Spill the beans validates your answer while you type.

Dark Mode and Dark Mode Colors provide a configurable dark color scheme.

Your Progress explains in detail what you already achieved.

Community shows how to connect to like-minded hiveminds.

Today’s Answers should be the last resort.

Use the Buy me a coffee link if you want to show some appreciation...
The Progress Bar displays your advancement based on your points so far. You can click on it to reveal the more detailed Your Progress screen.
With every letter you type, the Spill the beans emoji reveals whether you’re on the right track or barking up the wrong tree.
If you prefer darker interfaces, SBA's Dark Mode is for you. The default theme is too boring - you want it more colorful? Try…
…the Dark Mode configuration. You can pick your favorite out of twelve different color schemes.
An overview of the different ranks and how far you made it into your journey. You can also launch the Your Progress screen by clicking on the Progress Bar.
Letter count and First letter from the main panel give you a brief overview of the words that you’ve found and those that remain. The Grid screen combines these two views into a handy matrix.
Bingo, Perfect Pangram, GN4L - confused yet? The NYT has a glossary of common terms Spelling Bee fans use when talking about their favorite game. Some terms refer to game features and some are addidtional fun challenges.

So, where is this community? Well, there is more then just one way to join fellow players and the Assistant will you show you how to find them.
When you’re eventually out of words but are dying to know the solution, the Today’s Answers screen will satisfy your curiosity!

All words are linked to the respective terms in Google; maybe this will help you next time!
Spelling Bee Assistant uses responsive design and has been tested on many screen sizes. If the system requirements are met, it should run on your mobile device.

System requirements

Spelling Bee Assistant requires a modern web browser. The extension works in the Kiwi browser under Android. According to user reports, the bookmarklet can be used on Safari on iPhones/iPads instead.

Browser/OS combinations that are known to be working

Note: Browsers/OS refer to recent versions

Browser	Windows	MacOS	Ubuntu	Android	iOS
Blink ¹^\|²				²	?
WebKit ³^\|⁴	n/a	³	⁴	n/a	³^\|⁵

Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi…
Kiwi
Safari
Gnome Web
based on user report

Browser extension | Bookmarklet

Installing the extension on Kiwi (Android only)

Install Kiwi from the Google Play Store
Open it and visit Spelling Bee Assistant’s Chrome Store page
Click on Add to Chrome
Click on OK on the message that appears

Kiwi will likely display an error message upon installation, but - at least in my experience - it will work regardless.

Installing the bookmarklet on mobile devices

This task is a bit complex but feasible. Google links to several similar tutorials. I tried some on Android and they worked just fine. These tutorials commonly involve copying the code of the bookmarklet:

javascript:(()%3D%3E%7Bconst%20s%3Ddocument.createElement(%22script%22)%3Bs.async%3D!0%2Cs.src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fspelling-bee-assistant.app%2Fassets%2Fjs%2Fspelling-bee-assistant.min.js%22%2Cdocument.body.append(s)%3B%7D)()

The above options aren’t working for me

If you can’t use Spelling Bee Assistant, for instance, because you play on the NYT app or any other environment it won’t run on, I suggest using W. Shunn’s excellent site instead.

Doesn’t it spoil the game?

I try to keep Spelling Bee Assistant as subtle and unobstrusive as possible. Judging from user feedback as well my own experience, this concept works out just fine.

The challenge stays the same and so does the fun. But now you have a set of little helpers at hand when you’re stuck in a corner.

What is a bookmarklet?

Regular bookmarks along with the Spelling Bee Assistant

Bookmarklets are small pieces of code that can enhance the functionality of a website. They reside, just like regular bookmarks, in your browser’s bookmark menu. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward way to assign an icon to them.

I discovered a bug | I’d like to give feedback

You can report bugs or request features at GitHub. Keep in mind that this is a fun weekend project and I don’t want it to be a burden. I might work on issues from time to time, but I can’t make any promises.

You can also find me at r/NYTSpellingBee where I regularly post the latest updates under the handle spellingBeeAssistant.

Is the NYT behind this or are you affiliated with the NYT?

No, no affiliation whatsover. They know that Spelling Bee Assistant exists and rumor has it that some of them are even users...

Your privacy

This site doesn’t use any technology to collect personally identifiable information about you. It is, along with the bookmarklet, hosted on GitHub Pages. Please refer to their statement regarding the data they collect. I don’t have access to this data.

Depending on the store, installing the extension will display a message that reads "This extension can read and change your data on www.nytimes.com [...]", or similar. Understandably, this may raise some concerns. In fact, the extension reads Spelling Bee’s game data, nothing else. It doesn’t access, modify or submit any personal data whatsoever.

Most add-on stores provide download statistics, sometimes grouped by country, but never any personally identifiable information.