No Words Begin with the Center Letter
Updated 2025-01-18
Bees in which no words begin with the center letter: 72
As of 2025-01-18, only 72 Spelling Bees had this characteristic: none of the words in the solution set began with the center letter.
In the Spelling Bee of February 1, 2024, when the letter set was U B D E H L M (pangram HUMBLED), none of the words in the solution set began with the center letter U. In the Spelling Bee forum that day, a player asked a very interesting question: "Isn't unusual to have a central letter and no word starting with that?"
We were intrigued, and LexiConnexxions posed the question to the one person we know who could provide the answer: Bill Shunn, the genius who created and maintains the amazing www.sbsolver.com site. Bill very graciously did the calculations and provided this answer to LexiConnexxions: "This was a tricky query to compose, but it turns out that situation is not as uncommon as all that. It has happened 66 times [of 2,099 puzzles, as of 2024-02-01], which is a little more than 3% of all puzzles." We backtracked a little to establish that as of 2023-12-31, 64 Spelling Bees had this characteristic, where none of the words in the solution set began with the center letter. LexiConnexxions now tracks this datum on a daily basis, and we will keep this list up-to-date. 2018-2023: 64 Bees in which no words began with the center letter 2024: 7 2025: 1 [as of 2025-01-15]
We were intrigued, and LexiConnexxions posed the question to the one person we know who could provide the answer: Bill Shunn, the genius who created and maintains the amazing www.sbsolver.com site. Bill very graciously did the calculations and provided this answer to LexiConnexxions: "This was a tricky query to compose, but it turns out that situation is not as uncommon as all that. It has happened 66 times [of 2,099 puzzles, as of 2024-02-01], which is a little more than 3% of all puzzles." We backtracked a little to establish that as of 2023-12-31, 64 Spelling Bees had this characteristic, where none of the words in the solution set began with the center letter. LexiConnexxions now tracks this datum on a daily basis, and we will keep this list up-to-date. 2018-2023: 64 Bees in which no words began with the center letter 2024: 7 2025: 1 [as of 2025-01-15]
SPELLING BEES IN WHICH NO WORDS BEGIN WITH THE CENTER LETTER: 2024
2024-01-31
2024-02-01
2024-02-17
2024-02-20
2024-03-28
2024-06-06
2024-12-11
SPELLING BEES IN WHICH NO WORDS BEGIN WITH THE CENTER LETTER: 2025
2025-01-15
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