Daily Hive
How to play Daily Hive
Seven letters, one rule that matters: every word must use the center letter. Beyond that:
- Words are four letters or longer, built only from the day's seven letters.
- Letters can repeat within a word — use a letter twice, three times, whatever the word needs.
- Somewhere in every puzzle hides at least one pangram — a word that uses all seven letters. It's always a word you know.
Type on your keyboard or tap the letter ring, hit enter, and watch the meter climb. That's the whole game — and it's deliberately not a one-sitting game. Find three words over coffee, two more while your tests run, and the pangram on a lunch-break epiphany.
Scoring and the rank ladder
Four-letter words are worth 1 point; longer words score their length; a pangram adds a +7 bonus. As points accumulate you climb a bee's life: Egg → Larva → Pupa → Worker → Forager → Dancer → Queen.
The word counter and the rank thresholds are built from the day's common answers only — 15 to 30 words an everyday vocabulary can actually find, with Queen at 70% of their total score. That's the day's win. Rarer real words aren't wasted, though: anything in the big validity dictionary is accepted, scores its points toward your rank, and lands in your found list with a rare find sparkle. Deep vocabulary is a shortcut up the ladder, never a requirement.
Tips
- Hunt the pangram early. It's the biggest single score in the puzzle, and its letters — all seven of them — often unlock families of shorter words you'd otherwise miss.
- Milk your finds. Every found word suggests relatives: prefixes, suffixes, compounds, and rearrangements. LIKEN hides LIKE; UNLIKELY pays out the whole set.
- Shuffle when stuck. Rearranging the outer letters (the shuffle button, or Space) reliably shakes loose words your eyes had stopped seeing. It's not superstition; it's pattern-breaking.
- Repeats are legal. The genre's most-missed words are the ones that double a letter — think LEVEL, TITLE, KAYAK shapes. If a word feels impossible with seven letters, try repeating one.
- Rare words count. Guess checking runs on a large validity dictionary, so obscure-but-real words score as bonus finds. Guessing costs nothing — a rejected word just shakes and clears.
One hive a day
There's no free-play mode, and that's the point: one shared puzzle, every player, flipping at local midnight. Your progress saves in your browser all day — close the tab mid-thought and the hive is exactly as you left it. When the day rolls over, yesterday's complete answer list is waiting behind a single click, pangrams marked, so no word ever haunts you for long.
Frequently asked questions
What are the rules of Daily Hive?
You get seven letters arranged in a ring, with one letter in the center. Make words of four letters or more using only those letters. Every word must include the center letter, and letters can be reused as many times as you like within a word — QUEUE-style repeats are fine. Each puzzle always contains at least one pangram, a word that uses all seven letters.
What is a pangram in a spelling-bee-style puzzle?
A pangram is a word that uses every one of the seven letters at least once. Daily Hive guarantees each day's puzzle has at least one pangram that is a genuinely common word, and finding it earns a seven-point bonus on top of the word's normal score. It is usually the single biggest score jump of the day.
How is Daily Hive scored?
Four-letter words score one point. Longer words score their length — five points for five letters, six for six, and so on. A pangram scores its length plus a seven-point bonus. Your rank climbs a bee's life cycle as your score grows: Egg, Larva, Pupa, Worker, Forager, Dancer, and finally Queen at seventy percent of the puzzle's target score. The word counter and every rank threshold are based only on the day's common answers, so the targets are reachable with an everyday vocabulary — but rarer real words are still accepted and score points on top, marked as rare finds.
Is there a new Daily Hive puzzle every day?
Yes — one shared puzzle per day, the same for every player, changing at local midnight. There is no free-play mode: the daily ritual is the game. Your found words are saved in your browser all day, so you can chip away at it across many short visits, and yesterday's full answer list is always one click away.
Why is there no letter S in Daily Hive?
Leaving S out is a deliberate design choice the whole genre converged on: with S in play, nearly every word doubles into its plural, which pads the word list with hundreds of near-duplicate finds. Dropping it keeps the puzzle about vocabulary rather than pluralization.
Do I have to find every word to finish Daily Hive?
No. Reaching Queen — seventy percent of the target score — is the day's win, and most players stop somewhere on the ladder. Finding every common answer is a rarer flourish with its own honey-pot salute, but the game never demands it: ranks only climb, nothing expires, and an unfinished hive is a perfectly good day.
More games
- Word Ladder — Climb from one word to another changing a single letter per rung, every rung a real word. Par revealed when you solve, free undo all the way down, and a shared daily ladder.
- Hangman — Classic classroom hangman on a chalkboard — guess the word in six misses before the chalk snowman is erased. Everyday words, a shared daily, no gallows in sight.
- Five Dice — Three rolls, thirteen boxes — the classic push-your-luck dice sheet with live score previews and a shared Daily Dice.