Melbees

How to play Melbees: the Daily Challenge, the honeycomb and Pollen

Melbees: The Secret of Bees is Hangman meets Minesweeper on a honeycomb. Like in Hangman, you uncover secret words, the Secrets, letter by letter. The difference is that the letters aren't laid out in an alphabet. They're scattered across a honeycomb of hexes, and every hex you open gives you a clue about its neighbors, like in Minesweeper.

The Daily Challenge

Every day there's a new Challenge, the same for every player in the same language. There are four, one per level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert. Each one has 10 phases. The level sets how many Secrets each phase hides: 1 in Beginner, 2 in Intermediate, 3 in Advanced and 4 in Expert. You get one attempt per day at each level, and it counts from the moment the honeycomb opens. You can play in the app, on iPhone, Android and Windows PC, or right in your browser.

The honeycomb

The honeycomb is a big hexagon made of small hexes, and each one holds a letter. The most common letters appear once for each Secret, in that Secret's color, and sit on the outer part of the honeycomb. The rarer letters sit in the middle, each in a single pollen-colored cell that counts for every Secret at once. In Beginner the honeycomb is smaller, and each middle cell holds two rare letters.

A phase doesn't start in the dark. Usually each Secret already comes with one letter open, and part of the honeycomb is already open, with zeros, so you have somewhere to start.

What the number tells you

When you open a hex whose letter isn't right, it shows a number: the Pollen. That number tells you how many right letters are neighbors of that hex, from any Secret. A hex has at most six neighbors, and fewer on the edge. A 0 means no neighbor is a right letter, so the game opens those neighbors on its own, at no cost. A right letter doesn't show a number: a flower marks a right letter, and the letter stays in its center. The letter also goes into the Secret, in every position where it appears.

Match and Discard

You always act on a hex, and to open it you pick one of two actions:

Both open the hex and show the truth: the flower if the letter is right, the number if it isn't. The action only decides whether you were right. If you discard a right letter, it still goes into the Secret, but it costs a petal.

On a colored cell, the letter is right if it's in the Secret of that color. On the rare cell in the middle, it's right if it's in at least one of the Secrets, and it fills in every Secret that has it.

On your phone, you pick Match or Discard on the action button and tap the hex. In the default mode, the first tap marks and the second confirms. On a computer, the mouse buttons do the actions. You can change how you play in the settings. You can also just mark a hex with ✓ or ✕, for free, to remember what you were thinking. A mark doesn't open anything.

Double-tap an open number and Reveal neighbors opens all its closed neighbors at once, all with the same action. It costs the same as opening them one by one.

Petals and the clock

A wrong action, whether it's matching a letter that isn't right or discarding a right letter, costs a petal. In the Run and in the Daily Challenge you start with 5 petals. Each phase has a clock: 2 minutes in Beginner, 2:30 in Intermediate, 3 minutes in Advanced and 3:30 in Expert. If time runs out, you lose a petal, get 30 more seconds and keep going on the same phase. In the Challenge, the phase clock doesn't stop, not even with the app in the background.

How it ends

There's no button to submit the word. A Secret completes itself when its last letter shows up, and any hexes still closed in its color open. The phase ends when every Secret is complete. Clear all 10 phases and the day's Challenge is done. If you run out of petals, the game offers ways to continue, and if you give up, the game ends right there.

Friends and foes

The Melbees friends help out with power cards. Mel reveals a right letter from each Secret, Pow reveals wrong letters and Isa freezes the clock for 30 seconds. The Challenge starts with Mel's, Pow's, Lil's and Isa's cards (in Beginner, Hug's takes Lil's place), and after each phase you clear, you pick 2 of 5 cards on offer. The foes make things harder: Stu, for example, hides the number on two hexes.

What changes from day to day

Every day the Challenge's category changes, and the words come from the date. That's why every player in the same language gets the same honeycombs, and players in another language get other words. Each level has its own daily ranking. The next day, it all starts over with a new Challenge.

Where to start

Start with Beginner: one word, a small honeycomb. There, Hug, the hummingbird teacher, guides you along: he shows you how to read the numbers and when to discard. Tapping an open number lights up its neighbors, so you can see what it's counting. Hug also teaches you everything step by step in Flight Class.