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. The Halloween, 2021 redesign improved the usability, I hope.
Past clues are available here
Table content
| root # | answers covered | answer's first two letters | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | EG | 6 | Creamy Xmas drink with nutmeg & rum |
| 2 | 1 | EN | 6 | Sufficient |
| 3 | 1 | EN | 7 | Friendly understanding between countries, French |
| 4 | 1 | GE | 4 | DNA sequence that determines traits, or singing cowboy Autry |
| 5 | 1 | GE | 4 | ♂ counterpart to “lady,” slang abbr. |
| 7 | 1 | GO | 4 | Away, out of, past; adj. (“… Girl” film with Affleck) |
| 8 | 1 | GO | 4 | Orchestra chime or dinner bell |
| 9 | 1 | GO | 4 | Thug, noun |
| 6 | 1 | GO | 6 | Obtain |
| 11 | 1 | HE | 5 | Prehistoric circular monument (Stone…) |
| 12 | 1 | HO | 4 | Sharpen (a blade or skill) |
| 10 | 1 | HU | 4 | What you do to a painting you want to mount on a wall, or to a criminal sentenced to the gallows |
| 13 | 1 | HU | 4 | Search for (game animals to shoot?), or scavenger … |
| 14 | 1 | NE | 4 | Hawaiian goose & state bird |
| 15 | 1 | NE | 4 | Atomic number 10, gas in lighted signs |
| 16 | 1 | NO | 4 | Quantity of zero; “all” antonym |
| 18 | 1 | NO | 4 | 12:00, midday, 🕛 |
| 19 | 1 | NO | 4 | What you pass to someone in class, or ♪ in music |
| 21 | 1 | NO | 4 | In grammar, a person, place or thing |
| 17 | 1 | NO | 5 | Group of 9 (musicians) |
| 20 | 1 | NO | 6 | Zilch (the plans came to…), alt spelling |
| 22 | 1 | NU | 6 | Small breaded chicken serving, or gold ore chunk |
| 23 | 1 | ON | 4 | Preposition when mounting an animal or boarding a large vehicle |
| 25 | 1 | OU | 6 | Have better or more weapons (pistols), or surpass in power, verb + gerund |
| 24 | 1 | OU | 7 | $ spent, to a CPA, literal opposite of “income” |
| 26 | 1 | TE | 4 | Adolescent (...-ager), or numbers 13–19 |
| 30 | 1 | TE | 4 | Shelter you sleep in while camping |
| 27 | 1 | TE | 5 | Between nine and eleven |
| 28 | 1 | TE | 5 | Recent Christopher Nolan time-travel film, or a principle or belief |
| 29 | 1 | TE | 5 | Projecting piece of wood attached to a mortise |
| 31 | 1 | TH | 4 | At that time, or next; adv. (not always, but every now &…) |
| 33 | 1 | TH | 5 | G–string |
| 34 | 1 | TO | 4 | Character of sound, a sound (dial or ring-); noun; give greater strength or firmness to a body or a muscle; verb |
| 35 | 1 | TO | 4 | Chinese mafia, or BBQ grabber if plural |
| 38 | 1 | TO | 4 | Animated film or character, slang abbr. (car-…) |
| 37 | 1 | TO | 5 | 1,000 kilograms, UK spelling; double the last consonant in above |
| 36 | 1 | TO | 6 | Mouth muscle |
| 39 | 1 | TO | 7 | Difficult (“…break, kid”) or durable adj. + pangram verb (make stricter or more durable (“...up”)) (2 words) |
| 40 | 1 | TU | 4 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
| 42 | 1 | UN | 4 | Archaic preposition (Handel’s Messiah “…us a child is born”) |
| 10 | 1 | UN | 6 | What you do to a painting you want to mount on a wall, or to a criminal sentenced to the gallows |
| 40 | 1 | UN | 6 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
| 41 | 1 | UN | 7 | A salve, noun |
| 32 | 1 | UN | 9 | Use your brain to ponder something, verb |
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.