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, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1 | LE | 5 | Pause or reduction in intensity of something unpleasant (storm, traffic), compound noun |
| 4 | 1 | LO | 4 | Uncouth & aggressive ♂, noun |
| 3 | 1 | LO | 5 | Magnifying glass without a handle, homophone of curve that crosses itself above, noun |
| 5 | 1 | LU | 4 | Soothe (… into a false sense of security), verb; or a pause in activity, noun |
| 6 | 1 | LU | 4 | Doozy, or “To Sir With Love” singer |
| 7 | 1 | LU | 4 | Moon, French (Debussy’s “Clair de…”) |
| 9 | 1 | LU | 4 | Older guitar relative |
| 8 | 1 | LU | 7 | ½–moon shaped architectural space, starts with above; from French “little moon” |
| 10 | 1 | NO | 4 | In grammar, a person, place or thing |
| 11 | 1 | NU | 4 | Having no legal or binding force; invalid |
| 13 | 1 | OP | 7 | Ostentatiously rich and luxurious or lavish, pangram adj. |
| 14 | 1 | OU | 6 | Electric power receptacle where you insert a plug |
| 16 | 1 | OU | 6 | Results of computer processing |
| 15 | 1 | OU | 7 | Is more popular in a survey (The front-runner continues to…his rivals, according to Gallup), compound verb |
| 18 | 1 | PE | 6 | 2nd to last syllable in a word; remove suffix from more common term for 2nd to last |
| 21 | 1 | PO | 4 | Push your lower lip out because you're annoyed |
| 20 | 1 | PO | 5 | Young fowl being raised for food; remove suffix from term for chicken meat |
| 19 | 1 | PO | 7 | Emit smoke into the air or toxins into the water (give a hoot, don’t…), verb |
| 22 | 1 | PU | 4 | Literary for “whimper” (usually ends in –ING) |
| 23 | 1 | PU | 4 | Tug on, verb |
| 26 | 1 | PU | 4 | Soft, wet, shapeless mass (“…Fiction” film), or floating bits of fruit in orange juice |
| 27 | 1 | PU | 4 | Football drop-kick, flat-bottomed boat, Irish £ (slang) |
| 30 | 1 | PU | 4 | Hit a golf ball gently on the green |
| 24 | 1 | PU | 6 | Young hen; starts with above |
| 28 | 1 | PU | 6 | Marionette, but no strings (Elmo, e.g.) |
| 29 | 1 | PU | 6 | The act of retiring a batter or runner (baseball) |
| 25 | 1 | PU | 7 | Magazine section designed to be detached, sleeper sofa, or a troop withdrawal; compound noun; starts with list word; also an iffy birth control method (coitus interruptus) |
| 33 | 1 | TO | 4 | Promote, or offer horse racing tips |
| 32 | 1 | TO | 6 | Hairpiece worn to cover a bald spot |
| 31 | 1 | TO | 7 | Aromatic hydrocarbon C₇H₈ used in TNT explosive |
| 35 | 1 | TU | 4 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
| 40 | 1 | TU | 4 | Ballet skirt, or S Afr Bishop Desmond |
| 34 | 1 | TU | 5 | Lightweight, stiff veil or gown fabric |
| 39 | 1 | TU | 5 | Private instructor |
| 36 | 1 | TU | 6 | Periodic car maintenance, compound (oil change, tire rotation, etc.) |
| 37 | 1 | TU | 6 | Artificial underground passage (Lincoln or Holland…from NJ to Manhattan, e.g.) |
| 38 | 1 | TU | 6 | City where Elvis was born, or tree used as a honey plant in the Gulf Coast |
| 41 | 1 | UN | 4 | Archaic preposition (Handel’s Messiah “For … us a child is born”) |
| 1 | 1 | UN | 5 | Allow; rent |
| 17 | 1 | UN | 5 | Tool for writing with ink, noun/verb |
| 12 | 1 | UN | 6 | Pull on a door handle to gain admittance, verb + adv. (publicly) (2 words) |
| 35 | 1 | UN | 6 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
| 42 | 1 | UP | 4 | Fairy tale-starting preposition (“Once…a time”) |
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.