- Letters: H/AENOPT
- Words: 39
- Points: 150
- Pangrams: 1
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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 |
Today's puzzle
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Table content
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| 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 | ET | 6 | Two-carbon chain |
| 4 | 1 | HA | 4 | Dislike intensely, verb/noun |
| 5 | 1 | HA | 4 | Archaic 3rd person singular present form of "possess" (Hell … no fury) |
| 6 | 1 | HA | 5 | Yoga type that pairs poses with breathing |
| 3 | 1 | HA | 6 | Occur |
| 7 | 1 | HE | 4 | Stack in a disorderly pile, verb/noun |
| 8 | 1 | HE | 4 | Warm up in the oven, verb; or extreme warmth, noun |
| 9 | 1 | HE | 5 | Candy bar with toffee & milk chocolate, actor Ledger, or British field |
| 11 | 1 | HE | 5 | Hair or temp. tattoo dye |
| 10 | 1 | HE | 7 | Infidel; pagan; outside any widely held religion |
| 12 | 1 | HE | 7 | Seven-carbon chain |
| 13 | 1 | HO | 4 | Sharpen (a blade or skill) |
| 14 | 1 | HO | 4 | O you jump through or spin around your waist (hula …) |
| 15 | 1 | HO | 4 | Owl sound |
| 16 | 1 | HO | 4 | Fervently wish (I … it doesn’t rain today) |
| 17 | 1 | HO | 6 | Asian dish similar to fondue; AKA steamboat; compound |
| 1 | 1 | NE | 5 | Under; below (drop the first syllable for a dated literary form) |
| 18 | 1 | NE | 8 | Fictional medicine for sorrow |
| 19 | 1 | OA | 4 | Vow or pledge (you’re under one in court testimony) |
| 20 | 1 | OP | 4 | Sunfish, kingfish, Jerusalem haddock, or redfin ocean pan; close to TV queen with her OWN network & magazine |
| 22 | 1 | PA | 4 | Walking or bike trail |
| 21 | 1 | PA | 8 | All the gods of a religion (pangram) |
| 23 | 1 | PE | 6 | ♀ of a bird with showy plumage |
| 24 | 1 | PH | 4 | “Excellent” in hip-hop slang, NOT obese |
| 25 | 1 | PH | 5 | Device to make calls (tele…) |
| 26 | 1 | PH | 5 | Record player, slang abbr. |
| 27 | 1 | PH | 5 | Picture made using a camera, slang abbr. |
| 28 | 1 | PH | 6 | Smallest unit of light |
| 29 | 1 | PO | 4 | Christopher Robbins’ Winnie The … Bear |
| 30 | 1 | TE | 5 | What you use to chew, plural |
| 32 | 1 | TE | 5 | Between nine and eleven |
| 31 | 1 | TE | 6 | When the things you use to chew start to emerge, you chew on everything, and you drool all the time |
| 33 | 1 | TH | 4 | Comparison word (smaller…a breadbox) |
| 35 | 1 | TH | 4 | Pronoun for the other thing (this & …) |
| 36 | 1 | TH | 4 | Archaic form of “you” |
| 37 | 1 | TH | 4 | At that time, or next; adv. (not always, but every now & …) |
| 34 | 1 | TH | 5 | Feudal lord, ranking between an ordinary freeman and a hereditary noble |
| 38 | 1 | TH | 5 | 8th Greek letter, Θ |
| 39 | 1 | TO | 5 | What you chew with |
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.