- Letters: A/DINORY
- Words: 55
- Points: 230
- 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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| root # | answers covered | answer's first two letters | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | AD | Decorate (… with) (Xmas tree, e.g.) |
| 2 | 1 | AI | What you breathe |
| 3 | 1 | AN | Metal support for fireplace wood (firedog) |
| 4 | 1 | AN | Non–Apple phone OS, or humanoid robot (do they dream of electric sheep?) |
| 5 | 1 | AN | Irritate, vex, irk |
| 6 | 1 | AN | Soon, poetically |
| 26 | 1 | AN | Atom or molecule with a net electric charge |
| 7 | 1 | AR | Passion (Latin “to burn”) |
| 8 | 1 | AR | Opera solo |
| 9 | 1 | AR | Dry (climate or land), adj. |
| 10 | 1 | AR | Ordered series, esp. math |
| 11 | 1 | AR | Steep-sided gully in SW US; Spanish for creek |
| 12 | 1 | DA | Papa (… long legs, sugar …) |
| 13 | 1 | DA | Place you buy or produce milk, or food with milk adj., negated form is a pangram |
| 14 | 1 | DA | Fop, or foppish (“Yankee Doodle …” Cagney film) |
| 15 | 1 | DA | Mild exclamation; or mend holes in socks, verb |
| 16 | 1 | DI | Journal with personal thoughts (Anne Frank’s …) |
| 17 | 1 | DI | Arab $, not supper |
| 18 | 1 | DO | Thingamajig, slang; ends in “father” nickname |
| 19 | 1 | DO | Garden next to an opening to a house, compound made from building entrance and grassy area |
| 20 | 1 | DO | Mahimahi; or South American freshwater fish with a golden body and red fins |
| 21 | 1 | DR | What sink water goes down |
| 22 | 1 | DR | Cart with open sides |
| 23 | 1 | DR | Mythical Greek tree nymph |
| 24 | 1 | DY | Something that consists of 2 parts, from Greek (Kylo Ren & Rey, e.g.) |
| 25 | 1 | IN | Progress (make), usually plural noun, contains street synonym |
| 27 | 1 | NA | Indiaan flaat breaad |
| 28 | 1 | NA | Nothing, Spanish |
| 29 | 1 | NA | Lowest point, rock-bottom, depths; or below the observer in astronomy |
| 30 | 1 | NA | Greek water nymph, or dragonfly larva |
| 31 | 1 | NA | Grandma, slang; or Peter Pan dog |
| 32 | 1 | NA | ♀ goat, or nursemaid |
| 33 | 1 | NA | Dialectic negation (I survived with … a scratch) |
| 13 | 1 | NO | Place you buy or produce milk, or food with milk adj., negated form is a pangram |
| 34 | 1 | NO | 12:00 (lunchtime), phrase (meridian + 24 hour period) (…Devil AKA acedia) |
| 35 | 1 | OR | Make someone a priest |
| 36 | 1 | OR | With no special or distinctive features (“…People” with Mary Tyler Moore), pangram adj. |
| 37 | 1 | RA | Nickname of Cpl. O’Reilly in M.A.S.H., or Doppler weather sensor acronym |
| 38 | 1 | RA | Unit of angular measure |
| 39 | 1 | RA | AM/FM music & talk device in car & home |
| 40 | 1 | RA | Distance from a point on a circle to the center |
| 41 | 1 | RA | Harmful gas that seeps into homes; atomic no. 86 |
| 42 | 1 | RA | Sudden attack, as in “air” or police;” or insect spray |
| 43 | 2 | RA | Liquid precipitation |
| 44 | 1 | RA | Kirk’s Yeoman Janice on Star Trek, or South African $ |
| 45 | 1 | RA | Slang for odd or suspicious person (short for chosen by chance) |
| 46 | 1 | RA | Sexually excited, slang (musician Jackson or “Toy Story” composer Newman) |
| 47 | 1 | RA | Hindu queen, anagram of liquid precipitation |
| 48 | 1 | RA | Synthetic fabric from cellulose |
| 49 | 1 | RO | Street ("Abbey …"), or “rocky …” ice cream flavor |
| 50 | 1 | RO | Horse with 2–colored coat |
| 51 | 1 | RO | Lion “shout” |
| 52 | 1 | YA | 3 feet (…stick), or grassy area outside a house |
| 53 | 1 | YA | 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