README.md

jsbee

This is a quick little JavaScript app for (last-hope-desperation!!) peeking into anagram and constrained-anagram puzzles including the NYT Spelling Bee.

It was a fun little DIY JavaScript project at the end of 2024.

Philosophy

This is a word-list app -- a tool of last resort for the NYT Spelling Bee, and other things as well. Here is my own approach:

• First: I start with the day's letters, of course.
• Second: I generally get around half the words before looking at the Grid. I consider this effectively a part of the game itself.
• Also second: The Buddy has all the same information as the Grid, while removing the need for scratch paper.
• Third, the Stats: these aren't hints by any means, but, they help me prioritize: if I'm missing, say, a six-letter word starting with a P, then if 80% of readers have found it, I do know the word, and I just need to search. But if only 20% of readers have found it, in my experience, that's a word I do not know (yet).
• My partner and I have developed a list of the "usual suspects" -- words that seem to appear only in the Spelling Bee, including aril, natant, tilth, and tinct. These are encoded in the JSBee app. The usual-suspects list also includes our oh-I-cannot-believe-I-keep-forgetting that words.
• I try to complete the puzzle using these four. About half the time, I can Queen Bee on this basis: without hints.
• Fifth: the reader hints. On those days I've got a few words left, I end up taking 1, 2, 3, 5 hints; worst case, 10 or so. And looking at a hint almost always results in success.
• Sixth: even with reader hints there is occasionally a stumper. This rarely happens for me -- less than one day in ten -- in large part due to the quality of the reader hints. The fork in the road is to shrug and say I don't know what this word is, and call it a loss for the day -- or, to find a way to learn what may be a new word. Here is where word lists come into play -- and JSBee is a word-list app designed for that purpose.

Features

Bee mode:

• Enter required and other letters. (For the NYT Spelling Bee, there is one of the former and six of the latter.)
• Choose the word list from the dropdown:
  • "Usual suspects" is a short, curated list of once-bitten-twice-shy values from previous Bees.
  • "Long list" is a long list (almost 200K words), not all of which are in the NYT Spelling Bee. That is, this can show words that the NYT Spelling Bee doesn't accept.
• The output shown will include all words from the selected word list which contain only your required letters and your other letters. If those are E and XAMPLS then all the words shown will contain only some subset of the letters EXAMPLS, and additionally they'll have the letter E.
  • If the required letter is P and the other letters are AELM, then you'll see PALM and PALE but not MEAL.
  • If the required letter is M and the other letters are AELP, then you'll see MALL and MEAL but not PALE.
• Variations:
  • If you enter letters only in the required-letters field, you get more of an anagram-finder.
  • If you enter letters only in the other-letters field, you get more of a word-finder.

Pattern mode:

• Enter letters, along with . or *. The . will match any letter in one position; * will match any number of letters.
• Examples:
  • A..E shows ABLE, ACHE, etc.
  • *ETH shows all words ending in ETH
  • THEA* shows all words starting with THEA
  • TH*ST shows all words starting with TH and ending with ST.

Hosted app

https://johnkerl.org/jsbee.

JavaScript tooling

This app uses the Sliver JavaScript library.

Examples

Bee mode: specify one required or "center" letter, and others, using the short list:

Search in the long list:

Constrain the word length:

Make all letters required -- this means any match must include all of the letters:

Make all letters non-required -- this means any match must include any subset of the letters:

Pattern mode: