- Letters: R/AGILNY
- Words: 69
- Points: 367
- 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 | AG | 4 | Seaweed gel used as food thickener & bacteria culture medium |
| 1 | AG | 8 | Relating to cultivation of land (an … society) |
| 3 | AI | 4,6,6 | What you breathe |
| 2 | AN | 5,7 | Feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility, noun/verb, adv. form is a pangram |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Opera solo |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Seed covering |
| 2 | AR | 7,10 | Call someone into court to answer an indictment |
| 1 | AR | 9 | Organize something |
| 2 | AR | 5,8 | Ordered series, esp. math |
| 1 | GA | 8 | Building for parking cars |
| 1 | GA | 8 | Agitate a liquid in your mouth with air from your lungs |
| 2 | GI | 4,5 | Young ♀ |
| 2 | GL | 7,9 | Shine with a strong light, verb/noun; or (figuratively) stare fiercely at someone, verb/noun, adverb made from the gerund form is a pangram |
| 3 | GN | 5,6,8 | Twist into a state of deformity, verb; or a hard, twisted protruberance on a tree |
| 1 | GR | 5 | Cup that the Round Table knights tried to find (The Holy …) |
| 3 | GR | 5,6,8 | Cereal crop used as food, wheat for example; pattern of fibers in wood, paper or fabric |
| 1 | GR | 4 | Parent’s mom, slang abbr. |
| 1 | GR | 7 | Storage for threshed cereals |
| 1 | GR | 6 | Your parent's mother (familiar) |
| 2 | GR | 4,7 | Black & while shade (50 of them?) |
| 2 | GR | 5,8 | BBQ cooker; or interrogate, slang |
| 3 | GR | 4,8,10 | Smile broadly, verb/noun |
| 2 | IN | 7,10 | Firmly establish a habit or belief in someone |
| 1 | LA | 4 | Animal or criminal den |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Someone who doesn’t tell the truth |
| 1 | LI | 4 | ₺ or ₤, Turkish or old Italian $ |
| 1 | NA | 4 | Dialectic negation (I survived with … a scratch) |
| 1 | NI | 6 | Sushi consisting of a small ball of rice smeared with wasabi sauce and topped with raw fish or other seafood |
| 1 | RA | 7 | An old piece of cloth used for cleaning, noun; or criticize or make fun of someone, verb |
| 1 | RA | 4 | Indian ♫ pattern used as basis for improv, starts with old cloth |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Extreme, violent, or uncontrolled anger, noun/verb |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Sleeve that extends to the neckline without a shoulder seam |
| 2 | RA | 4,7 | What a train travels on, or what you hold on stairs |
| 3 | RA | 4,5,7 | Liquid precipitation |
| 2 | RA | 5,8 | Mass meeting of people for a common cause (pep, political), noun/verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | RA | 7 | Area between a lower and upper limit, noun/verb; or a series of mountains, noun; or an area for grazing, noun (Home, home on the …, where the deer and the antelope play) |
| 1 | RA | 5 | Tall and slim with long, slender limbs, adj. |
| 1 | RA | 4 | Hindu queen, anagram of liquid precipitation |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Full of enthusiasm (… to go) |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Stream of light |
| 1 | RA | 4 | Make a bell sound, verb/noun; encircle, verb/noun |
| 1 | RI | 4 | $ in Iran, Oman, & Yemen |
| 1 | RI | 7 | Make a boat ready for sailing by providing it with sails and rope (gerund form can also be a noun); or an apparatus for drilling or pumping oil |
| 1 | RI | 6 | Make someone annoyed or irritated |
| 1 | RI | 4 | Small stream |
| 2 | RI | 4,7 | Make a bell sound, verb/noun; encircle, verb/noun |
| 1 | RI | 5 | $ in Saudi Arabia |
| 1 | YA | 4 | Knitting thread, or wild story |
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