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 | Extramarital dalliance |
| 2 | 1 | A | Jackson 5 hairstyle |
| 3 | 1 | A | Shape of plane wings |
| 4 | 1 | A | Grass for hay, or Little Rascal |
| 5 | 1 | A | Cool & distant in behavior, adj.; anagram of bath sponge |
| 6 | 1 | C | Baby cow |
| 7 | 1 | C | Unit of energy in food |
| 8 | 1 | C | Steep rock face (white ones of Dover) |
| 9 | 1 | C | Style someone’s hair, verb/noun |
| 10 | 1 | C | Red, green, blue, purple, etc. |
| 11 | 1 | F | Front part of head containing eyes, nose, & mouth 😀; noun/verb |
| 12 | 1 | F | Don’t pass a test |
| 13 | 1 | F | Equitable |
| 14 | 1 | F | Autumn, noun; or plummet, verb |
| 15 | 1 | F | Statistical decrease, or result of slipping while on a ladder; compound |
| 16 | 1 | F | Distant |
| 17 | 1 | F | Comic play with ridiculous characters and action |
| 18 | 1 | F | Ancient grain used in salad & soup, not King Tut |
| 19 | 1 | F | Of or due from a son or daughter, adj. |
| 20 | 1 | F | Add material until the container or hole is at capacity |
| 21 | 1 | F | Swing (arms) wildly |
| 22 | 1 | F | Aptitude (for languages, e.g.) or panache |
| 23 | 1 | F | What you walk on inside (You’re getting mud on my clean…!) |
| 24 | 1 | F | Plants of a particular region (…& fauna), noun + adj. (…arrangement) (2 words) |
| 25 | 1 | F | Involving flowers |
| 26 | 1 | F | Baby horse or other equine, noun/verb |
| 27 | 1 | F | Flat Italian bread made with yeast and olive oil and flavored with herbs |
| 28 | 2 | F | Center of interest or activity, noun; adjust a camera to get a clear image, verb |
| 29 | 1 | F | Thin aluminum sheet for wrapping leftovers, noun; or thwart, verb (Police…-ed the robbery) |
| 30 | 1 | F | B-vitamin that treats anemia (… acid) |
| 31 | 1 | F | A book (A Shakespeare first … is quite valuable), a page in a book, or a book size; from Latin for “leaf” |
| 32 | 1 | F | Unwise person, court jester tarot card, noun; or to trick or deceive, verb |
| 33 | 1 | F | Meeting place (Roman …, online discussion…) |
| 34 | 1 | F | Weak & delicate |
| 35 | 1 | F | Monk (… Tuck of “Robin Hood”) |
| 36 | 1 | F | Decorative or unnecessary extra, noun + adj. |
| 37 | 1 | F | Play and move about cheerfully, excitedly, or energetically, verb/noun |
| 38 | 1 | L | Unit of bread, noun; or idle (...around), verb |
| 39 | 1 | L | Bath sponge |
| 40 | 1 | O | Entrails & organs used as food |
| 41 | 1 | O | Confirmed by an authority (it's …); someone who throws penalty flags |
| 42 | 1 | R | African palm tree, or its fiber in hats, mats, & baskets |
| 43 | 1 | R | Short repeated phrase in pop & jazz (guitar) |
| 44 | 1 | R | Undesirable people, overflow room on “Ellen" |
| 45 | 1 | R | Top of a house (where Santa lands) |
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.