How I squeeze a bit more out of Spelling Bee

Many of us Wordle players have started playing some of the New York Times other games, like Connections, the Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee.

A frustration with Spelling Bee is that once you hit SOLID, it kicks you out and only lets you continue if you have a paid subscription.*

I have found a way to wring a bit more out of the game by getting to NICE, which is one rank higher than SOLID. Here is how I do it:

1. Click "Hints" to open the "Spelling Bee Forum"
2. Scroll down to the line that indicates how many POINTS there are (144 today)
3. Determine the number of points for a "Solid" by taking 15% of the number of POINTS (15% of 144 = 22)
   
4. Guess words, being careful to not go over the number of SOLID points by concentrating on shorter words - 4 letter words = 1 point each, longer words = 1 point per letter - particularly avoiding pangrams because they are worth at least 14 points
   
5. When close to SOLID, try for the pangram by consulting the Spelling Bee Grid in the Hints.because it shows how many words there are of each length for each starting letter and the pangram has to be at least 7 letters long (Spoiler alert for today - there is a 10-letter word that starts with "B" and there are 12 words that start "BO")
6. Play a pangram and nothing else, if the pangram is worth at least 10% of the total score, you can make it to NICE and you'll see something like this:
   

 

* I'll probably never pay to play games, but Google gave a bunch of us free 3-month subscriptions because we were so good about giving ratings and answering questions in Google Maps. I took advantage of this, but have to admit that getting to Genius on Spelling Bee 90 days in a row meant that a lot of chores did not get done around here.