- Letters: B/AILRTY
- Words: 49
- Points: 306
- Pangrams: 6
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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, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | AB | 4,7 | Having the power, skill, means, or opportunity to do something, adj. (She was … to walk at 14 months), negated noun form is a pangram |
| 1 | AI | 7 | Compound hoops term for a shot that misses everything (basket, rim & backboard) |
| 1 | AL | 5 | Criminal’s excuse |
| 1 | AR | 9 | Suitable for growing crops, adj. |
| 2 | AR | 9,11 | Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system, adj. |
| 1 | BA | 4 | Rum sponge cake, or Ali & his 40 thieves |
| 1 | BA | 4 | Infant, noun; or treat like one, verb |
| 1 | BA | 4 | Fee to avoid prison, noun; scoop water out of a ship, or abandon, verb |
| 1 | BA | 4 | (Put a) worm on a fishing hook; verb/noun |
| 1 | BA | 4 | Where Cinderella lost her slipper, noun; or squeeze or form into a spherical shape, verb/noun |
| 1 | BA | 4 | Sharp projection near end of fishhook or on top of wire fence; start of Streisand name |
| 1 | BA | 9 | An uncivilized or primitive person |
| 1 | BA | 5 | What you use to hit the ball in games such as baseball or cricket; flying mammal |
| 1 | BA | 7 | Crazy, as a winged mammal |
| 1 | BI | 5 | Polish flat bread roll topped with chopped onions |
| 1 | BI | 7 | Liver secretion, or anger |
| 1 | BI | 4 | Invoice, or actor Murray, noun/verb |
| 1 | BI | 5 | ♂ goat, or “Piano Man” Joel |
| 1 | BI | 6 | Mexican dish of stewed meat seasoned with chili peppers |
| 1 | BI | 8 | Latin for lips, or lips of vagina |
| 2 | BL | 4,6 | Reveal a secret by indiscreet talk |
| 1 | BL | 4 | Make a sound like a sheep, goat, or calf; slang |
| 2 | BR | 4,6 | Badly behaved child; or a type of sausage (…wurst) |
| 1 | BR | 4 | Donkey sound |
| 2 | BR | 5,6 | Prickly shrub (… patch) |
| 2 | IR | 9,12 | Make someone annoyed, impatient, or angry; or cause inflammation |
| 2 | LA | 5,6 | Latin for lips, or lips of vagina |
| 1 | LA | 8 | Easily and frequently altered; unstable |
| 1 | LI | 9 | Responsible by law/legally answerable; likely to do something (he's ... to get upset) |
| 1 | LI | 7 | Place where books are kept and you're supposed to be quiet |
| 1 | RA | 5 | Jewish minister or teacher |
| 1 | RA | 6 | Gregarious, plant-eating mammal with long ears, long hind legs, and a short tail (famous ones include Bugs and Roger) |
| 1 | RA | 10 | Quantity of something measured per unit of something else, noun; or a charge per unit of something, noun; or place on a ranking scale, verb |
| 1 | RI | 5 | Curved bone, part of the chest |
| 1 | RI | 6 | What a frog says (I'm not kidding - it's really a Spelling Bee word) |
| 1 | TA | 5 | Striped cat with a distinctive M on its forehead |
| 1 | TA | 5 | Indian small drum pair; NOT dining room furniture |
| 2 | TI | 5,6 | Shin bone |
| 2 | TR | 6,8 | Social group composed chiefly of numerous families, clans, or generations having a shared ancestry and language, noun |
| 1 | TR | 6 | Soft felt hat with indented crown, named after the heroine in a stage play |
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