Spelling Bee Hints & Answers Today, November 16, 2026

The Spelling Bee from The New York Times (NYT) for Monday, Nov. 16, 2026, puts C in the center, with A, I, P, R, V and Y around it. The puzzle has 21 words and 97 points. This page gives a hint grid, a split of the points by word length and a pangram clue, and keeps the words for the last section.

Today the four-letter words are worth only 6 points in all; how scoring works is on our Spelling Bee page.

Monday’s hint grid, Nov. 16

Center letter C; outer letters A, I, P, R, V, Y. 21 words, 97 points, one pangram.

Starts with	4 letters	5 letters	6 letters	7 letters	Total
A	1	-	1	-	2
C	3	6	2	-	11
P	1	1	2	2	6
R	1	-	-	-	1
V	-	1	-	-	1
Total	6	8	5	2	21

Two-letter starts: AC-2, CA-6, CI-3, CR-2, PA-1, PI-2, PR-3, RA-1, VI-1.

The pangram clue

• Pangram (7 letters, starts with P)

  the condition of not being watched or disturbed by others; it ends in -y.

How the 97 points split by word length

Points are 1 for a four-letter word, 1 per letter for longer words, and a 7-point bonus for each pangram.

Group	Words	Points	Share of 97
4-letter answers	6	6	6.2%
5-letter answers	8	40	41.2%
6-letter answers	5	30	30.9%
7-letter answer that is not the pangram	1	7	7.2%
Pangram (7 letters plus the 7-point bonus)	1	14	14.4%
Total	21	97	100%

• The gap: Genius is 68 points, 62 more than the four-letter words can give.
• Longer words: the 14 answers with 5 letters or more that are not the pangram carry 77 points, 79.4% of the total.
• Without the pangram: the other 20 answers give 83 points, 15 more than Genius needs.

What makes Monday’s words hard

• Doubled letters: 3 answers repeat a letter back to back. Two are five-letter words, one starting CA and one CI, with a doubled R; the third is a six-letter CR word with a doubled P.
• Letter pairs found once: six pairs appear in only one answer each: AI, PA, PP, PY, RC and RY. The six-letter CR word holds two of them, PP and PY.
• C twice: 3 answers use the center letter twice, one six-letter word starting AC and two five-letter words starting CI.
• Rare outer letters: V is in 5 answers and Y in 7, against 18 for A, 14 for I, 15 for R and 11 for P.
• Repeats of any kind: 11 of the 21 answers use some letter more than once.
• One starter: only one answer starts with V, one with R and one with PA.

Sunday in brief

Sunday had T in the center, 32 words and 144 points. It had one pangram: Logotype.

Monday’s other pages: Wordle hints, Connections hints and Strands hints. Yesterday’s Bee hints are on the Nov. 15 page. See the November 2026 calendar or the weekly calendar.

Monday’s Spelling Bee answers, Nov. 16, 2026 (spoilers)

Stop here if you are still working on Monday’s puzzle.

• Pangram: Privacy
• 4 letters: Acai, Carp, Cava, Crap, Pica, Racy
• 5 letters: Capri, Carpi, Carry, Circa, Cirri, Civic, Pricy, Vicar
• 6 letters: Acacia, Caviar, Crappy, Papacy, Piracy
• 7 letters: Priapic, Privacy

The 6 four-letter words give 6 points, the 14 longer words give 77, and the pangram adds 14 with its bonus, for 97.