- Letters: P/ELNOTU
- Words: 61
- Points: 231
- 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. An exception:
since Sam won't allow S, when the root contains an S, the clue may be for a plural or suffixed form. "Mice" for example.
If a clue isn't self-explanatory, try googling it.
The TL;DR about the site comes after the table.
Past clues are available here |
Today's puzzle
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Table content
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| answers covered | answer's first two letters | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | EL | 5 | Run away to marry |
| 1 | EP | 4 | Fencing sword |
| 1 | LE | 5 | Pause or reduction in intensity of something unpleasant (storm, traffic), compound noun |
| 1 | LO | 6 | Move in an ungainly way in a series of clumsy paces or bounds |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Closed curve |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Run like a wolf, with bounding strides |
| 1 | LO | 5 | Magnifying glass without a handle, homophone of curve that rejoins itself, noun |
| 1 | NO | 4 | Slang negation |
| 1 | OP | 4 | Pull on a door handle to gain admittance, verb/adj. |
| 1 | OP | 8 | Adversary, rival, game competitor; noun |
| 1 | OP | 7 | Ostentatiously rich and luxurious or lavish, pangram adj. |
| 1 | OU | 7 | Is more popular in a survey (The front-runner continues to…his rivals, according to Gallup), compound verb |
| 1 | OU | 6 | Results of computer processing, compound |
| 1 | PE | 4 | Skin of a fruit, noun; or to remove it, verb |
| 1 | PE | 4 | Backside of a hammer |
| 1 | PE | 4 | Baby bird sound, Easter marshmallow, or a furtive look |
| 1 | PE | 6 | Small, rounded, compressed mass (food, buckshot, rabbit dung) |
| 1 | PE | 7 | Clump in a group of racing cyclists (French “small ball”), or trendy exercise bike |
| 1 | PE | 4 | Bombard (with snowballs), verb; or animal fur, noun |
| 1 | PE | 5 | Tube pasta, vodka optional |
| 1 | PE | 4 | Archaic for “repressed,” now used as …-up frustration, adj. |
| 1 | PE | 6 | 2nd to last syllable in a word; remove suffix from more common term for 2nd to last |
| 1 | PE | 4 | Low-ranking worker, drudge |
| 1 | PE | 6 | Humanity, or celeb mag with annual “sexiest man” |
| 1 | PL | 4 | Sound of Alka–Seltzer before the fizz |
| 1 | PL | 4 | Scheme, noun or verb (Roth’s “The … Against America”); or storyline in fiction |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Author of verse |
| 1 | PO | 4 | What a firefighter slides down |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Opinion survey, homophone of above (straw, Gallup, e.g.) |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Dusty flower reproductive emission that causes allergies |
| 1 | PO | 7 | Emit smoke into the air or toxins into the water (give a hoot, don’t…), verb |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Croquet on horseback |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Unleavened cornbread, often Southern or Native American |
| 1 | PO | 7 | Temp floating bridge; or cylinder full of air, two of which keep a type of slow boat afloat |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Swimming venue |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Tire out (I’m …-ed); or defecate, slang verb/noun |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Francis, Pius, etc. (head of Roman Catholic Church) |
| 1 | PO | 6 | (Historical or British) sweet or pretty child, or voodoo doll |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Strong (…[drinks]—common Jeopardy category); or able to achieve an erection (think IM– prefix) |
| 1 | PO | 5 | Young fowl being raised for food; remove suffix from term for chicken meat |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Push your lower lip out because you're annoyed |
| 1 | PU | 4 | Literary for “whimper” (usually ends in –ING) |
| 1 | PU | 4 | Tug on, verb |
| 1 | PU | 6 | Young hen; starts with above |
| 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) |
| 1 | PU | 4 | Soft, wet, shapeless mass (“… Fiction” film), or floating bits of fruit in orange juice, noun/verb |
| 1 | PU | 4 | Football drop-kick, flat-bottomed boat, Irish £ (slang) |
| 1 | PU | 6 | Marionette, but no strings (Elmo, e.g.) |
| 1 | PU | 6 | The act of retiring a batter or runner (baseball), compound |
| 1 | PU | 4 | Hit a golf ball gently on the green |
| 2 | TE | 5,6 | Native Am conical hut; 2 spellings |
| 1 | TE | 8 | Support rod for a circus enclosure, or a movie expected to do well, compound, ends in list word |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Small grayish slender-bodied shark, or mango tree grove; homophone of grayish-brown color |
| 1 | TO | 6 | Become unsteady & fall, or knock over (think regime change); verb |
| 1 | TO | 6 | Hairpiece worn to cover a bald spot |
| 1 | TU | 6 | Periodic car maintenance, compound (oil change, tire rotation, etc.) |
| 1 | TU | 6 | City where Elvis was born, or tree used as a honey plant in the Gulf Coast |
| 1 | UN | 6 | Pull on a door handle to gain admittance, verb/adj. |
| 1 | UN | 5 | Tool for writing with ink, noun/verb; or small enclosure for keeping animals, noun/verb |
| 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 follows in Kevin Davis' footsteps. The original set of 4,500 clues came from him, and they still make up about three quarters of the current clue set.
The "Bee Roots" approach is to provide explicit clues for root words, not every word. 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.
A few words can have one meaning as a suffixed form and another as a stand-alone word. EVENING, for example. In those cases I will use the meaning that I think is more common.
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