- Letters: R/ACDILO
- Words: 65
- Points: 268
- 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 | AC | 6 | Treaty, or large Honda sedan; noun; or agree (we are in …), verb |
| 1 | AC | 5 | Strong & unpleasant taste or smell, adj., noun form is a pangram |
| 1 | AR | 7 | Region or scene of simple pleasure or quiet, city near LA, or mountainous southern region of Greece |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Musically, “with the bow,” or gas brand |
| 1 | AR | 5 | Passion (Latin “to burn”) |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Opera solo |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Dry (climate or land), adj. |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Seed covering |
| 1 | CA | 7 | Unit of energy in food; one of the adjective forms that mean having lots of these is a pangram |
| 1 | CA | 4 | Thing used to play poker & bridge, noun; or ask for ID as proof of age before entry, verbified noun |
| 1 | CA | 7 | Heart, medical adj. (… arrest) |
| 1 | CA | 6 | Exercise that works the heart, slang abbr. |
| 1 | CA | 8 | Heart-shaped curve in math |
| 1 | CA | 7 | Rio de Janeiro native |
| 1 | CA | 7 | Capacity of an automobile; compound (I have a … of groceries; can you help me bring them in?) |
| 1 | CA | 5 | Actress Burnett with a variety show, or a Xmas song |
| 1 | CI | 5 | “Around” when used before a year, Latin |
| 1 | CI | 5 | Cloud forming wispy streaks (“mare's tails”) at high altitude |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Fiber from the outer husk of the coconut, used for making ropes & matting |
| 1 | CO | 6 | Cloth or leather strip a dog or cat wears around its neck |
| 1 | CO | 7 | Southern cabbage …greens; add a letter to the neck of a shirt |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Red, green, blue, purple, etc. |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Reef building marine invertebrates, a deep pink hue, or a sea off Australia |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Unit of firewood, or a string-like object (umbilical, vocal, electric …) |
| 1 | CO | 7 | Warm & friendly (… relations), adj.; or a liqueur (cherry …), pangram noun |
| 1 | CO | 7 | Small Toyota sedan, or the inner ring of flower petals |
| 1 | CO | 6 | Animal pen, or “O.K. …” gunfight site |
| 1 | CO | 7 | Bullfight, Spanish (… de toros) |
| 1 | CO | 8 | Hallway |
| 1 | CR | 4 | Holey shoe, or alligator relative abbr. |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Small plant that blooms early in spring |
| 1 | DO | 6 | US currency |
| 1 | DO | 5 | Literary term for a a state of great sorrow or distress (Spanish for pain), noun |
| 1 | DO | 4 | Room or bldg. entrance |
| 1 | DO | 6 | Mahimahi; or South American freshwater fish with a golden body and red fins |
| 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 | DR | 5 | Curious or unusual in a way that provokes amusement, adj. |
| 1 | DR | 5 | Spit leaking out of your mouth, noun/verb |
| 1 | LA | 4 | Animal or criminal den |
| 1 | LA | 4 | Pig fat for cooking |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Someone who doesn’t tell the truth |
| 1 | LI | 4 | ₺ or ₤, Turkish or old Italian $ |
| 1 | LO | 4 | ♂ version of “Lady” in nobility, or term for God; or, exclamation expressing surprise or worry |
| 1 | OD | 4 | Bad smell (body …) |
| 1 | OR | 4 | Spoken (… exam), or by mouth (… surgery), adjective |
| 1 | OR | 4 | Killer “whale” |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Grouping of people based on shared physical characteristics (regardless of …, creed, or color) |
| 1 | RA | 5 | Nickname of Cpl. O’Reilly in M.A.S.H., or Doppler weather sensor acronym |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Modern tire design; or arranged like spokes of a wheel, adj. |
| 1 | RA | 7 | Extreme or new (… idea, change), 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 | 7 | Car or wagon that is part of a train, compound |
| 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 | Street ("Abbey …"), or “rocky …” ice cream flavor |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Lion “shout” |
| 1 | RO | 6 | Ornamental decorative style from the late Baroque |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Stir up mud or trouble (…ed the waters) |
| 1 | RO | 4 | What you do to dice, verb; or Tootsie candy & small bread format, noun |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Large crucifix above altar, anagram of bldg. entrance |
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