Why didn't the bears give me a hint? (AB1)

Bears will sometimes give hints as to a playable word, as shown in the screenshot below:

Bears will NOT give hints if any of the following are true:

• The letters on the board can make 5 or more short words (words containing 5 or fewer letters).
• A valid word is spelled in the input bar.
• If it's a special-case situation where we intentionally turned off the hints:
• HI on the first turn of the tutorial.
• BIG on the second turn of the tutorial.
• All bears onscreen fall into one of these two categories (these bears are too small to give hints--if they're all too small then no one can give the hint):
• Only 1 square tall. (Doesn't matter how wide they are.)
• 1 square wide AND on the left edge or right edge of the board.

If none of the above conditions exist, you should receive a hint roughly every 8 seconds. Note that the bear's hints probably won't result in lots of points, but they should help you if can't think of any words to play.