The table provides clues for the roots of words in today's NY Times Spelling Bee. You're responsible for prefixes, suffixes, tense changes, plurals, doubling consonants before suffixes, and alternate spellings of roots. The TL;DR about the site comes after the table.
Past clues are available here
Table content
| words | root 1st letter | clue |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | C | Prison “room,” or smallest unit of an organism |
| 1 | C | Yo-Yo Ma’s instrument |
| 1 | C | Music symbol indicating key (e.g., treble, 🎼); French for “key” |
| 1 | C | Split (chin), adj. |
| 2 | C | Customer |
| 1 | C | Steep rock face (white ones of Dover) |
| 1 | C | Medical facility (health...) |
| 1 | E | Wide-ranging tastes, styles, or ideas; adj. |
| 2 | E | Vote into office |
| 1 | E | Small, delicate, impish; as a Keebler worker, adj. |
| 1 | E | Draw out a response, verb |
| 1 | E | Select group that’s superior |
| 1 | F | Perceive by touch; or experience (emotion) |
| 1 | F | Cat adj. |
| 1 | F | Cut or knock down (a tree or opponent, e.g.) |
| 1 | F | Cloth made by rolling and pressing wool with moisture and/or heat |
| 1 | F | Veg & seed used in cooking, esp. Italian |
| 1 | F | Condition, noun (in fine…); rhymes with whistling teapot |
| 1 | F | Folder of related papers, or tool for smoothing edges (fingernails, e.g.), noun/verb |
| 2 | F | Remove the bones from (fish), verb; or cut of meat, noun |
| 2 | F | Add material until the container or hole is at capacity |
| 1 | F | Run away from danger, NOT a bug that causes itching |
| 1 | F | Wool from sheep, or fabric (jacket), noun; or overcharge, slang verb |
| 1 | F | Group of ships sailing together, or enema brand |
| 1 | F | Michigan city with tainted water, or stone that makes sparks |
| 1 | F | Move swiftly & lightly, as a bird, e.g. (... about) |
| 1 | I | Frozen water spear from drips |
| 1 | I | Tend toward or feel favorably disposed toward, verb; or slope, noun |
| 1 | I | Change the form of a word to express a particular grammatical function or attribute, or vary intonation to express mood, pangram verb (usually with –ION suffix) |
| 1 | I | Cause something unpleasant to be suffered by someone (injuries, damage) |
| 1 | I | Computer chip maker; or what spies collect, abbr. |
| 1 | I | Brains, faculty of reasoning & understanding objectively; or a smart person |
| 2 | L | ←, remaining (only 1 cookie…), or departed |
| 2 | L | Merciful, not strict (as a judge or parent, e.g.) |
| 1 | L | Pre–Easter holiday when you give up meat, noun; or “borrowed” counterpart, verb |
| 1 | L | Bean for soup or curry |
| 1 | L | Allow |
| 1 | L | Itchy hair parasites |
| 2 | L | Not forbidden by law or custom |
| 1 | L | Bank hold on a mortgaged property, NOT tilt |
| 1 | L | Cereal Mikey prefers, board game, or “death” antonym |
| 1 | L | What a palm reader checks to see when you’ll die, or “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” friend assistance; compound |
| 1 | L | Raise up (fork-), not Uber competitor |
| 1 | L | Singsong accent |
| 1 | L | A queue, what you wait in for your turn |
| 1 | L | Cloth napkin fabric |
| 1 | L | Mainly brown & gray finch with a reddish breast & forehead |
| 1 | L | Dryer fluff |
| 1 | L | Horiz. beam across a door or window top |
| 1 | L | Low-calorie or low-fat in ad-speak (Miller...beer) |
| 1 | L | Small (Stuart or Chicken…), adj. |
| 1 | N | “Stinging” plant, noun; or to annoy, verb |
| 1 | T | Inform, verb; or Swiss archer William with an overture |
| 1 | T | Protocol for interacting (logging on, chatting) with remote computers |
| 1 | T | Thin ceramic wall, counter, flooring, or roofing square |
| 1 | T | Cash register or drawer, noun; “up to,” preposition; or prep soil for planting, verb |
| 1 | T | Move into a sloping position, or fight windmills (…at) |
| 2 | T | Name of a book, movie, or job |
| 1 | T | Dot above an i or j, or really small amount |
This site provides clues for a day's New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle. It exists to make it easier for Kevin Davis to take a day off. Most of the clues come from him. There may be some startup problems, but long term I think I can put the clues together with no more than half an hour's work.
The "Bee Roots" approach is to provide explicit clues for root words, not every word. This is similar to what Kevin Davis does, but without information about parts of speech As logophiles, we are pretty good at putting on prefixes and suffixes, changing tense, and forming plurals (including Latin plurals!). The clues cover root words, arranged alphabetically by root word, with a count of words in the puzzle that come from each root. For example, if a puzzle includes ROAM and ROAMING, there will be a clue for ROAM and a count of 2. The root may not appear in the puzzle at all; for example, the 2021-07-23 Bee included ICED, DEICE, and DEICED. For such a puzzle, the clue would be for ICE with a word count of 3.
The Bee Roots approach involves judgement sometimes. For example, if a puzzle includes LOVE, LOVED, and LOVELY, how many roots are needed to cover them? LOVE and LOVED share the root LOVE, certainly, but LOVELY is tricky. LOVE is part of its etymology, but by now, the word means "exquisitely beautiful," which is a lot farther from the meaning of LOVE than swithcing to past tense. I'm inclined to treat LOVE and LOVELY as separate roots. You may not agree, which is fine. Another thing we logophiles share is a LOVE of arguing about words on Twitter.
One last complication, until another one pops up: a few roots have multiple spellings, for example LOLLYGAG and LALLYGAG. Depending on the day's letters, and maybe even the editor's whims, one or both could be in the puzzle's answer list. With such roots, you could see a word count of 2, even if there are no applicable prefixes or suffixes.
I will do my best to keep this site up to date and helpful (I hope). Check it out, and tweet feedback to @donswartwout Tweet to @donswartwout
Many thanks to Kevin Davis, whose 4,500-word clue list made this possible.