- Letters: O/CELIMP
- Words: 54
- Points: 173
- Pangrams: 2
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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 | CE | 5 | Yo-Yo Ma’s instrument (also Pablo Casals') |
| 1 | CL | 5 | Walk with a heavy tread, verb |
| 1 | CL | 4 | Sound of a horse’s hooves on a hard surface |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Spherical or nearly spherical bacterium |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Wind up spirally, verb/noun (Hamlet’s “mortal …”) |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Baby or horse upset tummy |
| 1 | CO | 6 | “Lassie” dog breed |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Travel toward a particular place, tell your dog to move toward you, or slang for “to orgasm” |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Paid jokester, or “… book” with superheroes |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Provide for free (entry ticket, hotel room, drinks), slang abbr. |
| 1 | CO | 6 | Force someone to do something |
| 1 | CO | 7 | Gather or put together info for a report, or turn a program into machine code; pangram verb |
| 1 | CO | 4 | “Warm” antonym, or “neat!” |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Chicken pen, noun; or confine in a small space, verb (…ed up) |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Deal effectively with something difficult |
| 1 | EL | 5 | Run away to marry |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Chauffeured, stretched car, slang abbr. |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Fat-sucking procedure, abbr. |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Crazy, Spanish |
| 1 | LO | 4 | A particular point or place |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Hang out or droop, as a dog’s tongue |
| 1 | LO | 8 | Hard candy on a stick |
| 1 | LO | 6 | Move in an ungainly way in a series of clumsy paces or bounds |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Cloth weaving device |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Closed curve |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Run like a wolf, with bounding strides |
| 1 | ME | 4 | Office note abbr. |
| 1 | MI | 5 | Old stencil duplicator, abbr. (missing –graph suffix) |
| 1 | MO | 4 | To work hard (archaic); homophone of bris snipper |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Burrowing blind rodent, or embedded spy |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Mobster’s ♀ |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Sulk, brood; verb, past tense is also a bicycle with a small motor |
| 1 | OL | 5 | Oil adj. (… acid), from Latin for oil |
| 1 | OL | 4 | Margarine |
| 1 | OL | 4 | Mixture, or spicy Spanish stew, NOT margarine |
| 1 | OL | 5 | Skateboard jump, or Stan’s slapstick partner |
| 1 | PE | 6 | Humanity, or celeb mag with annual “sexiest man” |
| 1 | PI | 7 | ½–sized flute |
| 1 | PL | 4 | Sound of Alka–Seltzer before the fizz |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Verse that usually rhymes, from Frost et al. |
| 1 | PO | 4 | What a firefighter slides down |
| 1 | PO | 7 | A strong verbal or written attack on someone or something, pangram |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Law enforcement personnel (Help! Call the…!) (pic of me with Officer Joe at Comic–Con), |
| 1 | PO | 5 | Disease that put FDR in a wheelchair |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Opinion survey, homophone of above (straw, Gallup, e.g.) |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Croquet on horseback |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Botany term for apple or pear (think French) |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Large Asian grapefruit |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Extra seat on a horse or bike saddle, knob on a sword; or gymnastics “horse” |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Ceremonial public display (Elgar’s “… & Circumstance March” at graduations) |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Cheerleader accessory |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Swimming venue |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Tire out (I’m …ed); or defecate, slang verb/noun |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Leo, Francis, Pius, etc. (head of Roman Catholic Church) |
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