Monday, March 31, 2025

Answers to yesterday's Bee

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The official answers for today's puzzle are:

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Number of Pangrams: 1

Maximum Puzzle Score: 155

Number of Answers: 42

Points Needed for Genius: 109

Genius requires between 18 and 37 words. You need at least a 6-letter word to reach genius. If you don't get the pangram, you need 78% of the total points to reach genius. If you get the pangram, you only need 67% of the remaining points to reach genius.

The button below will reveal a chart with the number of words by each letter. Red bars indicate that there is a pangram(s) starting with that letter.


How does this puzzle compare to other puzzles?

Today's score of 155 was in the 44th percentile of all puzzles.
The last time there was a score this low was on March 30, 2025.
The highest score ever was 537 on January 22, 2021.
The lowest score ever was 47 on March 27, 2023.

This puzzle's 42 possible answers rank it in the 58th percentile of all puzzles.
The last time there were more answers than this was on March 30, 2025.
The highest number of answers was 81 on June 8, 2019.
The lowest number of answers was 16 on March 27, 2023.

It takes a 6-letter word for genius.
The last time this happened was on March 30, 2025.

Today's puzzle has an average word length of 4.9.
For all Bees, the average word length has been 5.3.



Haven't I seen these letters before?

Hover over a letter to see its first and most recent appearance in the Bee!



Haven't I seen these words before?

The most common words in the Bee are:

  • noon 192
  • loll 186
  • toot 182
  • naan 169
  • nana 169
  • lilt 136
  • till 136
  • tilt 136
  • tint 134
  • nene 129
  • mama 128
  • mamma 128
  • acacia 121
  • acai 121
  • onto 118
  • toon 118
  • anal 113
  • onion 113
  • anon 110
  • boob 110
  • booboo 110
  • baba 108
  • olio 107
  • tact 105
  • dodo 104
  • papa 104
  • call 103
  • calla 103
  • lull 103
  • lulu 103
  • mitt 102
  • poop 102
  • ratatat 102
  • tart 102
  • tartar 102
  • attar 101
  • tattoo 100
  • tatty 100
  • allay 99
  • ally 99
  • tutu 99
  • ammo 98
  • momma 98
  • mono 98
  • moon 98
  • cocci 97
  • epee 97
  • peep 97
  • nada 94
  • roar 94


How long are words in the Bee?

There have been 99,205 answers ever accepted in the Bee - with 10,545 unique words.
Below are the distributions of the lengths of these words.



Valid dictionary words not in today's official answers

You may be wondering why these words aren't here*:

  • abaca
  • abaka
  • abba
  • abbe
  • abeam
  • aboma
  • ackee
  • acock
  • akee
  • ambo
  • baboo
  • bacca
  • baccae
  • bema
  • cabob
  • cabomba
  • caca
  • caeca
  • caeoma
  • ceca
  • comae
  • comake
  • ekka
  • kabab
  • kabaka
  • kaka
  • kame
  • kokam
  • mabe
  • macaco
  • mack
  • mamee
  • mammae
  • mammee
  • mammock

*Because the New York Times considers them obscure or offensive.

aback

Etymology 1

adverb
  1. Towards the back or rear; backwards.
  2. In the rear; a distance behind.
  3. By surprise; startled; dumbfounded. (see usage)
  4. Backward against the mast; said of the sails when pressed by the wind from the "wrong" (forward) side, or of a ship when its sails are set that way.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. An abacus.

acme

noun
  1. The top or highest point; pinnacle; culmination.
  2. The crisis or height of a disease.
  3. Mature age; full bloom of life.

ameba

noun
  1. A member of the genus Amoeba of unicellular protozoa that moves by means of temporary projections called pseudopodia.
  2. The graph of the real part of the logarithms of a polynomial equation in complex numbers.
  3. An asexual.

amebae

noun
  1. A member of the genus Amoeba of unicellular protozoa that moves by means of temporary projections called pseudopodia.
  2. The graph of the real part of the logarithms of a polynomial equation in complex numbers.
  3. An asexual.

ammo

noun
  1. Ammunition.
verb
  1. To load up on ammunition.

amoeba

noun
  1. A member of the genus Amoeba of unicellular protozoa that moves by means of temporary projections called pseudopodia.
  2. The graph of the real part of the logarithms of a polynomial equation in complex numbers.
  3. An asexual.

amoebae

noun
  1. A member of the genus Amoeba of unicellular protozoa that moves by means of temporary projections called pseudopodia.
  2. The graph of the real part of the logarithms of a polynomial equation in complex numbers.
  3. An asexual.

amok

No Definition Found.

baba

noun
  1. A kind of sponge cake soaked in rum-flavoured syrup.
  2. (esp. among people of East European ancestry) A grandmother.
  3. An old woman, especially a traditional old woman from an eastern European culture.
  4. (esp. among people of Indian ancestry) A father.
  5. (Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism) A holy man, a spiritual leader.
  6. A baby, child.
  7. In baby talk, often used for a variety of words beginning with b, such as bottle or blanket.

babe

noun
  1. A baby or infant; a very young human or animal.
  2. An attractive person, especially a young woman.
  3. Darling (term of endearment).

babka

No Definition Found.

back

Etymology 1

noun
  1. The rear of the body, especially the part between the neck and the end of the spine and opposite the chest and belly.
  2. That which is farthest away from the front.
  3. Upper part of a natural object which is considered to resemble an animal's back.
  4. A support or resource in reserve.
  5. The keel and keelson of a ship.
  6. The roof of a horizontal underground passage.
  7. Effort, usually physical.
  8. A non-alcoholic drink (often water or a soft drink), to go with hard liquor or a cocktail.
  9. Among leather dealers, one of the thickest and stoutest tanned hides.
verb
  1. To go in the reverse direction.
  2. To support.
  3. (of the wind) To change direction contrary to the normal pattern; that is, to shift anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere, or clockwise in the southern hemisphere.
  4. (of a square sail) To brace the yards so that the wind presses on the front of the sail, to slow the ship.
  5. (of an anchor) To lay out a second, smaller anchor to provide additional holding power.
  6. (of a hunting dog) To stand still behind another dog which has pointed.
  7. To push or force backwards.
  8. To get upon the back of; to mount.
  9. To place or seat upon the back.
  10. To make a back for; to furnish with a back.
  11. To adjoin behind; to be at the back of.
  12. To write upon the back of, possibly as an endorsement.
  13. (of a justice of the peace) To sign or endorse (a warrant, issued in another county, to apprehend an offender).
  14. To row backward with (oars).
adjective
  1. Near the rear.
  2. Not current.
  3. Far from the main area.
  4. In arrear; overdue.
  5. Moving or operating backward.
  6. Pronounced with the highest part of the body of the tongue toward the back of the mouth, near the soft palate (most often describing a vowel).
adverb
  1. To or in a previous condition or place.
  2. Away from the front or from an edge.
  3. In a manner that impedes.
  4. In a reciprocal manner; in return.
  5. Earlier, ago.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A large shallow vat; a cistern, tub, or trough, used by brewers, distillers, dyers, picklers, gluemakers, and others, for mixing or cooling wort, holding water, hot glue, etc.
  2. A ferryboat.

backcomb

noun
  1. The hairstyle produced by backcombing.
  2. A decorative comb worn as an ornament and to secure a hairstyle.
verb
  1. To hold hair and comb it towards the head, thus giving it a bushier look; tease.

bake

noun
  1. The act of cooking food by baking.
  2. Any of various baked dishes resembling casserole.
  3. A social event at which food (such as seafood) is baked, or at which baked food is served.
  4. (Barbadian, sometimes US and UK) A small, flat (or ball-shaped) cake of dough eaten in Barbados and sometimes elsewhere, similar in appearance and ingredients to a pancake but fried (or in some places sometimes roasted).
  5. Any item that is baked.
verb
  1. (with person as subject) To cook (something) in an oven.
  2. (with baked thing as subject) To be cooked in an oven.
  3. To be warmed to drying and hardening.
  4. To dry by heat.
  5. To be hot.
  6. To cause to be hot.
  7. To smoke marijuana.
  8. To harden by cold.
  9. To fix (lighting, reflections, etc.) as part of the texture of an object to improve rendering performance.
  10. (with "in" or "into") To incorporate into something greater.

bamboo

noun
  1. A grass of the Poaceae family, characterised by its woody, hollow, round, straight, jointed stem, all of which are in the Bambuseae tribe.
  2. The wood of the bamboo plant as a material or cane.
  3. A didgeridoo.
  4. A member of the British military or British East India Company who spent so much time in Indonesia, India, or Malaysia that they never went back home.
verb
  1. To flog with a bamboo cane.
  2. To paint (furniture, etc.) to give it the appearance of bamboo.
  3. To penetrate sexually.
adjective
  1. Made of the wood of the bamboo.

baobab

noun
  1. A tree, Adansonia digitata (and similar species), native to tropical Africa, having a broad swollen trunk and edible gourd-like hanging fruits.

beak

noun
  1. Anatomical uses.
  2. Figurative uses.
  3. Colloquial uses.
verb
  1. Strike with the beak.
  2. Seize with the beak.
  3. To play truant.

beam

noun
  1. Any large piece of timber or iron long in proportion to its thickness, and prepared for use.
  2. One of the principal horizontal timbers of a building; one of the transverse members of a ship's frame on which the decks are laid — supported at the sides by knees in wooden ships and by stringers in steel ones.
  3. The maximum width of a vessel (note that a vessel with a beam of 15 foot can also be said to be 15 foot abeam)
  4. The crossbar of a mechanical balance, from the ends of which the scales are suspended.
  5. The principal stem of the antler of a deer.
  6. The pole of a carriage or chariot.
  7. A cylinder of wood, making part of a loom, on which weavers wind the warp before weaving and the cylinder on which the cloth is rolled, as it is woven.
  8. The straight part or shank of an anchor.
  9. The central bar of a plow, to which the handles and colter are secured, and to the end of which are attached the oxen or horses that draw it.
  10. In steam engines, a heavy iron lever having an oscillating motion on a central axis, one end of which is connected with the piston rod from which it receives motion, and the other with the crank of the wheel shaft.
  11. A ray or collection of approximately parallel rays emitted from the sun or other luminous body.
  12. A ray; a gleam.
  13. One of the long feathers in the wing of a hawk.
  14. A horizontal bar which connects the stems of two or more notes to group them and to indicate metric value.
  15. An elevated rectangular dirt pile used to cheaply build an elevated portion of a railway.
verb
  1. To emit beams of light; shine; radiate.
  2. To smile broadly or especially cheerfully.
  3. To furnish or supply with beams
  4. To give the appearance of beams to.
  5. To transmit matter or information via a high-tech wireless mechanism.
  6. (currying) To stretch something (for example an animal hide) on a beam.
  7. To put (something) on a beam
  8. To connect (musical notes) with a beam, or thick line, in music notation.

became

verb
  1. To arrive, come (to a place).
  2. To come about; happen; come into being; arise.
  3. Begin to be; turn into.
  4. To be proper for; to beseem.
  5. Of an adornment, piece of clothing etc.: to look attractive on (someone).

cacao

noun
  1. A tree, Theobroma cacao, whose seed is used to make chocolate.
  2. This tree's seed, the cocoa bean.

cake

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A rich, sweet dessert food, typically made of flour, sugar and eggs and baked in an oven, and often covered in icing.
  2. A small mass of baked dough, especially a thin loaf from unleavened dough.
  3. A thin wafer-shaped mass of fried batter; a griddlecake or pancake.
  4. A block of any of various dense materials.
  5. A trivially easy task or responsibility; from a piece of cake.
  6. Money.
  7. Used to describe the doctrine of having one's cake and eating it too.
  8. A buttock, especially one that is exceptionally plump.
verb
  1. Coat (something) with a crust of solid material.
  2. To form into a cake, or mass.

Etymology 2

verb
  1. To cackle like a goose.

came

Etymology 1

preposition
  1. Used to indicate that the following event, period, or change in state occurred in the past, after a time of waiting, enduring, or anticipation
verb
  1. To move from further away to nearer to.
  2. To arrive.
  3. To appear, to manifest itself.
  4. (with an infinitive) To begin to have an opinion or feeling.
  5. (with an infinitive) To do something by chance, without intending to do it.
  6. To take a position relative to something else in a sequence.
  7. To achieve orgasm; to cum; to ejaculate.
  8. (with close) To approach a state of being or accomplishment.
  9. (with to) To take a particular approach or point of view in regard to something.
  10. (fossil word) To become, to turn out to be.
  11. To be supplied, or made available; to exist.
  12. To carry through; to succeed in.
  13. Happen.
  14. (with from or sometimes of) To have as an origin, originate.
  15. (of grain) To germinate.
  16. To pretend to be; to behave in the manner of.
verb
  1. To have an orgasm, to feel the sensation of an orgasm.
  2. To ejaculate.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A grooved strip of lead used to hold panes of glass together.

cameo

noun
  1. A piece of jewelry, etc., carved in relief.
  2. A single very brief appearance, especially by a prominent celebrity in a movie or song.
verb
  1. To appear in a cameo role.

camo

noun
  1. A pattern on clothing consisting of irregularly shaped patches that are either greenish/brownish, brownish/whitish, or bluish/whitish, as used by ground combat forces.
  2. Clothes made from camouflage fabric, for concealment in combat or hunting.
verb
  1. To camouflage.
  2. To put on camouflage clothing.

coca

Etymology 1

noun
  1. Any of the four cultivated plants which belong to the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America.
  2. The dried leaf of one of these plants, the South American shrub (Erythroxylum coca), widely cultivated in Andean countries, which is the source of cocaine.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A pastry typically made and consumed in the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

cocoa

Etymology 1

noun
  1. The dried and partially fermented fatty seeds of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made.
  2. An unsweetened brown powder made from roasted, ground cocoa beans, used in making chocolate, and in cooking.
  3. A hot drink made with milk, cocoa powder, and sugar.
  4. A serving of this drink.
  5. A light to medium brown colour.
adjective
  1. Of a light to medium brown colour, like that of cocoa powder.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. Coconut palm.
  2. Coconut, the fruit of the coconut palm.

coma

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A state of unconsciousness from which one may not wake up, usually induced by some form of trauma.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. A cloud of dust surrounding the nucleus of a comet.
  2. A defect characterized by diffuse, pear-shaped images that in an ideal image would appear as points.
  3. A tuft or bunch, such as the assemblage of branches forming the head of a tree, a cluster of bracts when empty and terminating the inflorescence of a plant, or a tuft of long hairs on certain seeds.

comeback

noun
  1. A return (e.g. to popularity, success, etc.) after an extended period of obscurity.
  2. A retort or answer, particularly a quick or clever one.
  3. An occurrence of an athlete or sports team in a competition overcoming a substantial disadvantage in points to win or draw.

comma

noun
  1. The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set off parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
  2. A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
  3. Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Polygonia, having a comma-shaped white mark on the underwings, especially Polygonia c-album and Polygonia c-aureum of North Africa, Europe, and Asia.
  4. A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
  5. A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
  6. In Ancient Greek rhetoric, a short clause, something less than a colon, originally denoted by comma marks. In antiquity it was defined as a combination of words having no more than eight syllables in all. It was later applied to longer phrases, e.g. the Johannine comma.
  7. A brief interval.
verb
  1. To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.

kabob

noun
  1. A dish of pieces of meat, fish, or vegetables roasted on a skewer or spit, especially a doner kebab.
  2. A shish kebab or any other food on a skewer.
  3. The outward growing portions of a shish kebab structure.
  4. A Muslim, usually of southern European, Middle Eastern, or North African descent.
  5. The vulva.
verb
  1. To roast in the style of a kebab
  2. To stab or skewer

kaboom

noun
  1. The sound of an explosion, typically seen in comic strips or heard in a light-hearted conversation.
interjection
  1. The sound of an explosion, typically seen in comic strips or heard in a light-hearted conversation.

kebab

noun
  1. A dish of pieces of meat, fish, or vegetables roasted on a skewer or spit, especially a doner kebab.
  2. A shish kebab or any other food on a skewer.
  3. The outward growing portions of a shish kebab structure.
  4. A Muslim, usually of southern European, Middle Eastern, or North African descent.
  5. The vulva.
verb
  1. To roast in the style of a kebab
  2. To stab or skewer

mace

Etymology 1

noun
  1. A heavy fighting club.
  2. A ceremonial form of this weapon.
  3. A long baton used by some drum majors to keep time and lead a marching band. If this baton is referred to as a mace, by convention it has a ceremonial often decorative head, which, if of metal, usually is hollow and sometimes intricately worked.
  4. An officer who carries a mace as an emblem of authority.
  5. A knobbed mallet used by curriers in dressing leather to make it supple.
  6. A billiard cue.
verb
  1. To hit someone or something with a mace.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. An old money of account in China equal to one tenth of a tael.
  2. An old weight of 57.98 grains.

Etymology 3

noun
  1. A spice obtained from the outer layer of the kernel of the fruit of the nutmeg.

Etymology 4

noun
  1. Tear gas or pepper spray, especially for personal use.
verb
  1. To spray in defense or attack with mace (pepper spray or tear gas) using a hand-held device.
  2. To spray a similar noxious chemical in defense or attack using an available hand-held device such as an aerosol spray can.

make

Etymology 1

noun
  1. Brand or kind; model.
  2. Manner or style of construction (style of how a thing is made); form.
  3. Origin (of a manufactured article); manufacture; production.
  4. A person's character or disposition.
  5. The act or process of making something, especially in industrial manufacturing.
  6. Quantity produced, especially of materials.
  7. A software utility for automatically building large applications, or an implementation of this utility.
  8. Identification or recognition (of identity), especially from police records or evidence.
  9. (usually in phrase "easy make") Past, present or future target of seduction (usually female).
  10. A promotion.
  11. A home-made project
  12. Turn to declare the trump for a hand (in bridge), or to shuffle the cards.
  13. A made basket.
  14. The closing of an electrical circuit.
verb
  1. To create.
  2. To behave, to act.
  3. To tend; to contribute; to have effect; with for or against.
  4. To constitute.
  5. To add up to, have a sum of.
  6. (construed with of, typically interrogative) To interpret.
  7. (usually stressed) To bring into success.
  8. (ditransitive, second object is an adjective or participle) To cause to be.
  9. To cause to appear to be; to represent as.
  10. (ditransitive, second object is a verb) To cause (to do something); to compel (to do something).
  11. (ditransitive, second object is a verb, can be stressed for emphasis or clarity) To force to do.
  12. (ditransitive, of a fact) To indicate or suggest to be.
  13. (of a bed) To cover neatly with bedclothes.
  14. (law enforcement) To recognise, identify, spot.
  15. To arrive at a destination, usually at or by a certain time.
  16. To proceed (in a direction).
  17. To cover (a given distance) by travelling.
  18. To move at (a speed).
  19. To appoint; to name.
  20. To induct into the Mafia or a similar organization (as a made man).
  21. To defecate or urinate.
  22. To earn, to gain (money, points, membership or status).
  23. To pay, to cover (an expense); chiefly used after expressions of inability.
  24. To compose verses; to write poetry; to versify.
  25. To enact; to establish.
  26. To develop into; to prove to be.
  27. To form or formulate in the mind.
  28. To perform a feat.
  29. To gain sufficient audience to warrant its existence.
  30. To act in a certain manner; to have to do; to manage; to interfere; to be active; often in the phrase to meddle or make.
  31. To increase; to augment; to accrue.
  32. To be engaged or concerned in.
  33. To cause to be (in a specified place), used after a subjective what.
  34. To take the virginity of.
  35. To have sexual intercourse with.

Etymology 2

noun
  1. Mate; a spouse or companion; a match.

Etymology 3

noun
  1. A halfpenny.

Etymology 4

noun
  1. An agricultural tool resembling a scythe, used to cut (harvest) certain plants such as peas, reeds, or tares.

mako

noun
  1. Mako shark

mama

noun
  1. (hypocoristic, usually childish) Mother, female parent.

mamba

noun
  1. Any of various venomous snakes of the genus Dendroaspis, native to Africa, that live in trees.

mambo

noun
  1. A voodoo priestess (in Haiti)
  2. A Latin-American musical genre, adapted from rumba, originating from Cuba in the 1940s, or a dance or rhythm of this genre.
verb
  1. To perform this dance.

mamma

Etymology 1

noun
  1. The milk-secreting organ of female humans and other mammals which includes the mammary gland and the nipple or teat; a breast; an udder. (plural: mammae)
  2. An accessory cloud like a mammary in appearance, which can form on the underside of most cloud genera

Etymology 2

noun
  1. (hypocoristic, usually childish) Mother, female parent.

mecca

No Definition Found.

momma

noun
  1. Mother
  2. A voluptuous woman.
  3. One's wife or girlfriend.

boba

noun
  1. Short for boba tea.
noun
  1. A small edible ball made primarily from tapioca starch; used in bubble tea.