# Hive

Make words from seven letters, always using the centre one.

- Category: Word
- Features: Saved progress
- Tags: word, letters, hive, honeycomb, pangram, anagram, vocabulary, spelling, brain

## How to play

### Goal

Make as many words as you can from seven letters and climb the ranks. Every word must use the letter in the centre.

### Rules

• Words are 4 letters or longer and use only the hive's letters
• Every word must contain the centre letter
• A letter can be used more than once in a word
• A 4-letter word is worth 1 point; longer words score a point per letter
• A pangram uses all seven letters and earns 7 bonus points — every puzzle has at least one
• No puzzle uses the letter S
• Ranks follow your share of the puzzle's points; the top rank, Full Hive, needs every word
• The puzzle's word count is of common words; a rarer word still scores, as a bonus word marked with a star

### How to Play

• Tap the cells to spell a word, then press Enter
• Delete removes the last letter; Shuffle deals the outer letters into a new order
• On a keyboard, type the letters, press Enter or Space to play the word, Backspace to fix a typo and Escape to clear it
• The arrow keys shuffle the outer letters
• There is no clock — leave whenever you like and pick the puzzle up later
• Reveal ends the puzzle and lists every word you missed, pangrams first

### Tips

• Look for common endings — ED, ING, ER, LY — and add them to words you have
• Try each outer letter beside the centre one; pairs like TH, CH and QU open up many words
• Hunt the pangram early: it is worth the most and often unlocks related words
• Shuffle when you are stuck — a new order shows new patterns

### Difficulty

Easy puzzles hold 20–35 common words, Medium 36–60 and Hard 61–110. The rules are the same at every level, and the ranks scale with each puzzle's total.

Play Hive in the free Game Nest app for iPhone, iPad, and Android.