- Letters: T/AELNUX
- Words: 66
- Points: 316
- 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 | AN | 4 | $ to join a poker game, or “before” prefix |
| 1 | AN | 9 | Before birth; usually written as PRE–... |
| 2 | AN | 7,8 | It picks up TV or radio signals |
| 1 | AT | 9 | Weaken (… the effects of), physics term |
| 1 | AT | 6 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
| 1 | AU | 4 | Parent’s sister |
| 1 | EA | 5 | Consume food |
| 1 | EL | 5 | Make someone ecstatically happy, verb |
| 1 | EN | 7 | Friendly understanding between countries (French) |
| 1 | EX | 5 | Glorify |
| 1 | EX | 6 | Direction in a script: a group of characters leave the stage |
| 1 | EX | 6 | Remaining, adj. (the original manuscript is no longer …) |
| 1 | EX | 6 | Degree, size, scope, or amount (… of damage, to some …) |
| 1 | EX | 9 | Mitigate (he wasn’t punished due to …-ing circumstances) |
| 2 | EX | 5,8 | Feel triumphant or jubilant, verb, adj. form is a pangram |
| 1 | LA | 7 | Tropical perennial flowering plant in the verbena family |
| 2 | LA | 4,5 | Running behind (I’m … for class), or deceased (The … Charles Grodin) |
| 1 | LA | 6 | Capable of emerging, developing, or becoming active in the future (a … fingerprint) |
| 1 | LA | 5 | Type of rubber, used to make disposable gloves |
| 1 | LA | 5 | Coffee with espresso & steamed milk |
| 1 | LE | 5 | Not fatty (… meat), adj.; or incline (… back in your chair) |
| 1 | LE | 4 | Pre–Easter holiday when you give up meat, noun; or “borrowed” counterpart, verb |
| 1 | LU | 6 | Crescent-moon-shaped carpal bone, noun |
| 1 | LU | 7 | ½–moon shaped architectural space, starts with above; from French “little moon” |
| 1 | LU | 4 | Older guitar relative |
| 1 | LU | 6 | Phase between ovulation & start of menstruation; anatomy adj.; begins with old guitar relative |
| 1 | NA | 5 | Latin adj. relating to place or time of birth |
| 1 | NA | 6 | Swimming or floating adj. from Latin |
| 2 | NE | 4,6 | Tidy |
| 1 | NE | 6 | “Stinging” plant, noun; or to annoy, verb |
| 1 | NE | 4 | Word you hear when it’s your turn at the deli |
| 1 | TA | 4 | Story (fairy…), NOT what dogs wag; noun |
| 1 | TA | 6 | Natural aptitude or skill (…show) |
| 1 | TA | 4 | Of greater than average height, adj. |
| 1 | TA | 6 | Rat out your sibling to your parents |
| 1 | TA | 10 | Someone who rats out a sibling, compound |
| 1 | TA | 5 | Provoke with words |
| 2 | TA | 4,6 | Not slack, as a rope, adj. |
| 1 | TA | 4 | Group of any rank, such as a species, family, or class (biology) |
| 1 | TE | 4 | Blue-green color, or a duck with a stripe of that color |
| 1 | TE | 4 | Nipple |
| 1 | TE | 4 | Adolescent (…ager), or numbers 13–19 |
| 1 | TE | 8 | Means of sending words to a TV, compound |
| 1 | TE | 5 | Printers linked by phone before fax machines |
| 1 | TE | 4 | Inform, verb; or Swiss archer William with an overture |
| 1 | TE | 8 | Revealing, compound adj.; or indication, compound noun (Poe’s “The … Heart”) |
| 1 | TE | 6 | Person a landlord rents to, one of two or more of these is a pangram |
| 1 | TE | 5 | A principle or belief; or a Christopher Nolan time-travel film |
| 1 | TE | 4 | Shelter you sleep in while camping |
| 2 | TE | 4,7 | Short, written message sent by a mobile phone to another one |
| 1 | TU | 5 | Lightweight, stiff veil or gown fabric |
| 1 | TU | 4 | Chicken of the sea (Ahi …) |
| 1 | TU | 4 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
| 1 | TU | 6 | Artificial underground passage (Lincoln or Holland…from NJ to Manhattan, e.g.) |
| 1 | TU | 5 | Private instructor |
| 1 | TU | 4 | Ballet skirt, or S Afr Bishop Desmond |
| 1 | UL | 7 | Make a high-pitched wail as an expression of grief, imitative verb |
| 1 | UN | 7 | Consume food |
| 1 | UN | 5 | Allow; rent |
| 1 | UN | 6 | Sync the pitch of instruments before concerts |
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