GamePlay: Beeatrice

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Beeatrice Buzzby is the cartoon mascot of the New York Times Spelling Bee.
In every edition of the Spelling Bee Beeatrice appears at first sans chapeau, as shown below at left. When a player achieves "Genius" level, Beeatrice dons a tiny blue mortarboard (below, center).
When a player finds all the words on the selected list and achieves Queen Bee, Beeatrice doffs the mortarboard and dons a crown (below, right).
(More on Spelling Bee rankings may be found HERE.)
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Sharp-eyed players have noticed that Beeatrice sometimes sports unusual headgear on certain holidays, such as (from left to right) Hallowe'en, Valentine's Day, and April Fool's Day:
Beeatrice celebrates the New Year by trading her Genius mortarboard for a shiny date, which she wears on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. On New Year's Eve 2025-12-31, Bee players were also treated to a celebratory opening screen (below right).
Beeatrice also celebrates the Spelling Bee itself, with party hats to mark her birthdays. The yellow hat on the left appeared on her fourth (May 9, 2022) and fifth (May 9, 2023) birthdays, and the multicolored cap appeared on her seventh birthday (May 9, 2025) and eighth (May 9, 2026) birthdays, as shown below in the center. Also, on Beeatrice's fourth birthday in 2022, subscribers received an email with an animated transformation of Beeatrice's Queen Bee crown to her birthday cap. You can see it here: https://www.dtg1026.com/nyt-beeday.html.
The Spelling Bee of March 12, 2025 was the 2500th regular Bee puzzle published since the online Spelling Bee had its début on May 9, 2018. The opening screen of the March 12 Bee depicted Beeatrice surrounded by animated celebratory fizziness, as shown below right.
Robert Vinluan, a lead product designer on the New York Times Games team, describes the lore behind Spelling Bee’s cartoon mascot:The Making of BeeatriceNew York Times Instagram, September 23, 2025https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO8kiBGEo2F/?hl=en
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