- Letters: A/DEHINW
- Words: 45
- Points: 203
- 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 | AD | 5 | Join something to something else |
| 2 | AD | 6,7 | Math term for a number which is summed with another (the “1” or “2” in 1 + 2 = 3) |
| 1 | AD | 7 | 1 of the 4 bases in DNA |
| 1 | AH | 5 | Further forward in space or time; in the lead (sports) |
| 1 | AI | 5 | Help |
| 1 | AI | 4 | Assistant to an important person, esp. military or political (…-de-camp), noun |
| 1 | AN | 4 | Opposite of old |
| 1 | AW | 4 | Feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder, noun/verb |
| 2 | DA | 4,6 | 1st appearance of light in the sky |
| 3 | DE | 4,6,8 | Not alive |
| 2 | DE | 8,10 | Remove spent flowers from a plant, verb/noun (compound) |
| 1 | DE | 4 | College administrator, or actor James of “Rebel Without a Cause” |
| 1 | EN | 6 | A group of 9, from Greek (such as the 9 Egyptian deities “The Great …”) |
| 2 | HA | 4,6 | What sticks out of your sleeve |
| 1 | HA | 5 | Sound made by a speaker who is fumbling for words (he hemmed and …ed) |
| 2 | HE | 4,6 | Body part that holds your brain, eyes, ears, nose and mouth |
| 1 | HE | 8 | Wind blowing from directly in front (the … slowed down the flight), compound pangram |
| 2 | HE | 6,8 | Loud, harsh cry of a donkey or mule; or TV country music variety show from Nashville; compound noun/verb |
| 2 | HE | 5,7 | Hair or temp. tattoo dye |
| 1 | ID | 4 | Thought or suggestion (here’s a new …), noun |
| 1 | IN | 5 | Stupid, silly, ridiculous (… questions or comments); adj. |
| 1 | NA | 4 | Indiaan flaat breaad |
| 1 | NA | 4 | Nothing, Spanish |
| 1 | NA | 5 | Greek water nymph, or dragonfly larva |
| 1 | NA | 4 | Grandma, slang; or Peter Pan dog |
| 1 | NA | 7 | ♀ goat, or nursemaid |
| 1 | WA | 6 | Compress something soft into a lump or ball (the kids were shooting spit …s in study hall) |
| 2 | WA | 4,5 | Walk in ankle-deep water |
| 1 | WA | 6 | Hawaiian word for woman |
| 1 | WA | 4 | What a magician, wizard, or TSA agent waves |
| 2 | WA | 4,5 | Decrease (esp. moon), NOT Batman alter ego Bruce |
| 1 | WA | 5 | “Would like to do,” slang contraction |
| 2 | WE | 4,6 | Taper someone off of, esp. mother’s milk |
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