New Delhi, July 15 -- NONBELIEF (9 letters, 16 points), which uses all seven letters exactly once.

Hint 1: The pangram is a compound noun from philosophy and religious studies - it describes the absence of religious faith rather than its active denial.

Hint 2: A 9-letter word in today's grid names a number so large it rarely appears outside mathematics - one followed by thirty zeros in the short scale.

Hint 3: The center letter N dominates today's shorter words. Expect a cluster of four-letter entries where N appears at the start, middle, and end - sometimes twice in the same word.

Today's pangram:

NONBELIEF

NONBELIEF is formed from NON (a Latin negation prefix meaning not or without) and BELIEF. The word sits in a careful philosoph...