Spelling Bee: Not Just for Nerds
Contrary to what the title suggests, I am in fact a nerd. I love books, I love reading, I love words. It’s not too much of a stretch then, when I say that I spend my free time playing word games. I play everything from Wordle to crosswords, and it’s something I could never get sick of. However, I know that’s not the case for everyone.
For some, I bet that sitting down and doing word puzzles is not their ideal morning (or afternoon, or evening), but recently I’ve been playing a game with a seemingly universal appeal. A friend of mine, who is decidedly not a fellow nerd, recommended it to me, and now there’s a whole group of us that play together.
It’s a simple spelling game: you’re given seven letters and you make as many words as you can with them. There are a few rules: one of the letters is mandatory (the one in the middle), and the words have to be four letters or more, but you can use each letter as many times as you like within them. There’s a new puzzle every day, as well as an unlimited mode so you can switch things up whenever you like. When the daily puzzle is released at midnight, the previous day’s full word list is too, so you can agonize over the obvious words that you missed, or lament the ones you’ve never heard of. Did I mention it’s totally free?
But I digress– what makes this game so fun is that you can play it on your own if you want to, but you can also play with others. Now, spelling bees aren’t historically a team sport, so you might be wondering how that’s possible. Remember how I said I play this with a group? I do. We sit with the daily puzzle individually of course, but we check in throughout the day. We compare answers, help each other out, lend our respective expertises, and sometimes just sit together trying to figure it all out. It makes something as simple as a spelling game social and fun. Not all of us are word-nerds like me, either. One of us, the one who started playing first, actually can’t stand reading. Spelling Bee is an enjoyable and easy way to work your brain and learn new words, and maybe connect with friends whether you can sit with one another in person or not.
Where can you start playing?
