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
| clue # | words covered | root 1st letter | clue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | A | Garlic mayonnaise, from French for garlic |
| 2 | 1 | A | Metal support for fireplace wood (firedog) |
| 3 | 1 | A | Non–Apple phone OS, or humanoid robot (do they dream of electric sheep?) |
| 4 | 1 | A | Opera solo |
| 5 | 1 | A | Dry (climate or land), adj. |
| 6 | 1 | A | Seed covering |
| 7 | 1 | D | What you turn on a rotary phone or radio knob |
| 8 | 1 | D | Phallus-shaped sex toy |
| 9 | 1 | D | Pickle spice |
| 10 | 1 | D | Arab $, not supper |
| 11 | 1 | D | Flintstones pet, or T. Rex family abbr. |
| 12 | 1 | D | Alpine peasant woman's dress |
| 13 | 1 | D | Spike hammered into a divider between rooms (dead as a ...) |
| 14 | 1 | D | What sink water goes down |
| 15 | 1 | D | Power tool with bits for making holes, or practice for an emergency (fire…); noun |
| 16 | 1 | D | Star Wars robot (R2D2, C3PO, BB–8), or last syllable of Google phone OS (An-…) |
| 17 | 1 | I | Punk rocker Billy; “American…” TV singing contest; or public figure you worship (…-ize) |
| 18 | 1 | I | Not outside |
| 19 | 1 | I | Not on the coast |
| 20 | 1 | I | Decorate something by embedding pieces of a different material in it, flush with its surface |
| 21 | 1 | I | Progress (make), usually plural noun, contains street synonym |
| 22 | 1 | I | Atom or molecule with a net electric charge |
| 23 | 1 | I | Element Fe (number 26), or hot clothes presser, noun/verb |
| 24 | 1 | L | Animal or criminal den |
| 25 | 1 | L | Hawaiian island or porch |
| 26 | 1 | L | Sheep (wool) oil, used as skin moisturizer |
| 27 | 2 | L | Put something down |
| 28 | 1 | L | Someone who doesn’t tell the truth |
| 29 | 1 | L | Roaring “...King” animal that travels in a pride |
| 30 | 1 | L | ₺ or ₤, Turkish or old Italian $ |
| 31 | 1 | L | Sex organ region of body (fruit of my…s); anagram of “…King” animal |
| 32 | 1 | N | Lowest point, rock-bottom, depths; or below the observer in astronomy |
| 33 | 1 | N | Greek water nymph, or dragonfly larva |
| 34 | 1 | N | Spike that’s hammered, noun/verb |
| 35 | 1 | N | “Black” in French; or dark mystery genre (film…) |
| 36 | 1 | N | 1 followed 30 zeroes; Latin 9 prefix |
| 37 | 1 | O | Mixture, or spicy Spanish stew, NOT margarine |
| 38 | 1 | O | Veg that makes you cry when cut |
| 39 | 1 | O | Make someone a priest |
| 40 | 1 | O | Relating to a thing's position in a series |
| 41 | 1 | R | Modern tire design; or arranged like spokes of a wheel, adj. + adv. |
| 42 | 1 | R | Unit of angular measure of a ○ |
| 43 | 1 | R | AM/FM music & talk device in car & home |
| 44 | 1 | R | Distance from a point on a circle to the center |
| 45 | 1 | R | Sudden attack, as in “air” or police;” or insect spray |
| 46 | 1 | R | What a train travels on, or what you hold on stairs |
| 47 | 1 | R | Trains & tracks, compound noun; ends in below (“I’ve been working on the…”) |
| 48 | 1 | R | Liquid precipitation |
| 49 | 1 | R | Hindu queen, anagram of above |
| 50 | 1 | R | $ in Iran, Oman, & Yemen |
| 51 | 1 | R | Small stream |
| 52 | 1 | R | Tough outer skin of certain fruit, especially citrus |
| 53 | 1 | R | Stir up mud or trouble (…-ed the waters) |
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.