- Letters: I/ADLMOR
- Words: 47
- Points: 163
- 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 | 7 | Highest naval rank |
| 1 | AI | 5 | Garlic mayonnaise, from French for garlic |
| 1 | AI | 7 | Letters transported by plane (compound) |
| 1 | AM | 4 | Surrounded by, preposition |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Opera solo |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Dry (climate or land), adj. |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Seed covering |
| 1 | AR | 9 | US animal that rolls into a ball to protect itself, pangram |
| 1 | AR | 8 | Relating to heraldry or heraldic devices |
| 1 | DI | 4 | What you turn on a rotary phone or radio knob (don't touch that …!) |
| 1 | DI | 5 | Phallus-shaped sex toy |
| 1 | DI | 4 | Pickle spice |
| 1 | DI | 7 | Model representing a scene with three-dimensional figures |
| 1 | DR | 5 | Power tool with bits for making holes, or practice for an emergency (fire …); noun |
| 1 | DR | 5 | Star Wars robot (R2D2, C3PO, BB–8), or last syllable of Google phone OS (An…) |
| 1 | ID | 5 | Slang phrase particular to a language (“raining cats & dogs”), noun |
| 1 | ID | 4 | Punk rocker Billy; “American …” TV singing contest; or public figure you worship (…-ize) |
| 1 | IM | 4 | Prayer leader at mosque |
| 1 | IM | 7 | Principled, ethical, adjective; or the lesson of a story, noun |
| 1 | LA | 4 | Animal or criminal den |
| 1 | LA | 4 | Put something down |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Someone who doesn’t tell the truth |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Peru capital, or bean |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Chauffeured, stretched car, slang abbr. |
| 1 | LI | 4 | ₺ or ₤, Turkish or old Italian $ |
| 1 | MA | 4 | 8 of them were milking in a Xmas carol |
| 1 | MA | 4 | Letters you get or send |
| 1 | MA | 8 | Apt. bldg. & office chamber where you pick up letters & packages, compound |
| 1 | MA | 4 | Permanently injure |
| 2 | MA | 7,8 | Ague, or swamp fever from mosquitoes |
| 1 | MI | 6 | Location descriptor of plane “collision” that occurs in the sky |
| 1 | MI | 4 | Computer music protocol, calf-length skirt, or noon in French |
| 1 | MI | 4 | Not severe (a … case of the flu), or gentle (Clark Kent, the …-mannered reporter) |
| 1 | MI | 4 | Wheat or pepper grinder |
| 1 | MI | 6 | Looking glass (“Who’s the fairest of them all?”) |
| 1 | MO | 4 | To work hard (archaic); homophone of bris snipper |
| 1 | OL | 4 | Mixture, or spicy Spanish stew, NOT margarine |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Modern tire design; or arranged like spokes of a wheel, adj. |
| 1 | RA | 5 | AM/FM music & talk device in car & home |
| 1 | RA | 5 | Distance from a point on a circle to the center |
| 1 | RA | 4 | Sudden attack, as in “air” or police;” or insect spray |
| 1 | RA | 4 | What a train travels on, or what you hold on stairs |
| 1 | RA | 8 | Trains & tracks, compound noun; ends in below (“I’ve been working on the …”) |
| 1 | RI | 4 | $ in Iran, Oman, & Yemen |
| 1 | RI | 4 | Small stream |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Stir up mud or trouble (…ed the waters) |
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