- Letters: C/ABDKOR
- Words: 38
- Points: 179
- Pangrams: 3
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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 | AB | 5 | Surprised (taken …), adv. |
| 1 | AB | 11 | Magician’s rhyming incantation |
| 1 | AC | 6 | Treaty, or large Honda sedan; noun; or agree (we are in …), verb |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Musically, “with the bow,” or gas brand |
| 1 | BA | 4 | Part of body containing your spine |
| 1 | BA | 9 | You might get strapped to one of these to protect your spine after an accident; or the flat part of a basketball goal that the basket is attached to, compound |
| 1 | BA | 8 | Rear entrance to a building, compound |
| 1 | BA | 7 | Bartender's assistant, compound |
| 1 | BA | 8 | Mexican BBQ; origin of English word via Texas; starts with 1st 5 letters of “Jeannie” actress Eden name |
| 1 | BA | 7 | Soldier’s lodging |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Dark German lager, or chicken sound |
| 1 | BO | 8 | A framework, typically with rails or bars, for holding reading material, compound |
| 1 | CA | 5 | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 1 | CA | 4 | Bread starch avoided on many diets, slang abbr. |
| 1 | CA | 4 | Thing used to play poker & bridge, noun; or ask for ID as proof of age before entry, verbified noun |
| 1 | CA | 9 | What most shipping and storage boxes are made from, compound |
| 1 | CA | 5 | Tree or shrub whose pods are often used to make a chocolate substitute |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Venomous snake with a hood |
| 1 | CO | 4 | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Rooster, or slang for penis |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Concluding event, remark, or section, especially in music |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Prep or heat food |
| 1 | CO | 8 | Bound, printed recipes (e.g. Fanny Farmer’s), compound |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Unit of firewood, or a string-like object (umbilical, vocal, electric …) |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Wine bottle stopper |
| 1 | CO | 9 | Flat piece of material made by compressing the buoyant, light brown material from the outer bark of an oak, hung on a wall and used to display notices that can be pinned to it, compound |
| 1 | CR | 4 | Crustacean with claws & eye stalks |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Slang for cocaine you smoke, or fracture line, noun + adj. |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Frog sound, or slang for “die” |
| 1 | CR | 4 | Holey shoe, or alligator relative abbr. |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Slow-cooking “pot” |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Lawbreaker, slang (Nixon: “I’m not a …”), or shepherd’s staff |
| 1 | DO | 4 | Structure where you can moor your boat, noun/verb; or device you can plug your laptop into to get a big screen, keyboard and mouse |
| 1 | OR | 4 | Killer “whale” |
| 1 | RA | 4 | Frame used to lock up bikes, set up billiards balls, organize spices, or dry dishes, e.g. |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Stone (Dwayne Johnson, with "The"); or what you do with a baby's cradle but shouldn't do with a boat, verb |
| 1 | RO | 6 | Ornamental decorative style from the late Baroque |
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