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 | A | Get a top grade on a test |
| 1 | A | Teen facial zits |
| 1 | A | South American snake that can grow very large |
| 1 | C | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 1 | C | Rhythmic pattern; sequence of chords in music |
| 2 | C | Get something without paying for it (slang) |
| 4 | C | Barred enclosure, or actor Nicolas |
| 1 | C | Cylindrical metal container; fire from a job (slang) |
| 1 | C | Leggy French dance |
| 2 | C | Walking stick, or striped peppermint Xmas crook |
| 1 | C | Tropical “lily” |
| 2 | C | Wheeled artillery |
| 2 | C | Narrow boat with pointed ends, propelled by paddling, noun/verb |
| 1 | C | Nikon rival (similar to above weapon), or accepted (Church) lore, noun |
| 6 | C | Give up (power or territory) |
| 1 | C | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 1 | C | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 2 | C | Nest for butterfly larva, noun; or wrap up like one, verb |
| 1 | C | Concluding event, remark, or section, especially in music |
| 6 | C | Write a computer program, or cipher a message to hide it |
| 1 | C | Sequence of 3 nucleotides in DNA |
| 1 | C | ♀ student, or mixed ♂ & ♀ school, slang abbr. |
| 1 | C | High-quality brandy from western France |
| 1 | C | Swindle, verb; someone serving a prison sentence (noun, slang) |
| 1 | C | Self-owned apartment with an HOA, slang abbr. |
| 2 | C | Accept or allow misbehavior to continue (“We don’t…this behavior”) |
| 2 | C | Ice cream holder shape |
| 2 | C | Latin American dance of African origin, usually with several people in a single line, one behind the other; tall drum played with hands |
| 1 | C | Made a pigeon sound, or talked amorously |
| 1 | D | Type of freshwater fish, including redside, northern pearl, and longnose |
| 2 | D | Move rhythmically to music, verb/noun |
| 1 | D | Ordained minister of an order ranking below that of priest; lay officer of a church, especially one involved in service |
| 1 | D | Span of ten years |
| 1 | D | Moral or cultural decline, luxurious self-indulgence |
| 1 | D | Ten-sided geometric figure |
| 1 | D | Chrysler Bldg. style (Art…) |
| 1 | D | Twenty-sided geometric figure |
| 1 | N | Person with non-traditional right-wing political views, slang abbr. |
| 1 | N | Literary word meaning “for the [time being]” |
| 1 | O | Enormous body of salt water |
| 1 | O | A single time (they deliver…a week) |
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.