- Letters: L/CEFHIY
- Words: 38
- Points: 141
- 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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| root # | answers covered | answer's first two letters | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | CE | Prison “room,” or smallest unit of an organism |
| 2 | 1 | CE | Yo-Yo Ma’s instrument (also Pablo Casals') |
| 3 | 1 | CH | Fashionable |
| 4 | 1 | CH | Milky latex of the sapodilla tree, used to make chewing gum & start of a square gum brand name |
| 5 | 1 | CH | Leader or ruler of a people, tribe or clan, noun; most important, adj. |
| 6 | 1 | CH | Hot pepper, or spicy meat stew (… con carne) |
| 7 | 2 | CH | Cool (in the fridge), or relax (… out) |
| 8 | 1 | CI | Aromatic white-flowered plant of the parsley family, with fernlike leaves |
| 9 | 1 | CL | Music symbol indicating key (e.g., treble, 🎼); French for “key” |
| 10 | 1 | CL | Phrasé that’s overused |
| 11 | 1 | CL | Steep rock face (white ones of Dover) |
| 12 | 2 | CY | Ride a bike; series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order |
| 13 | 1 | EE | Snake-like fish |
| 14 | 1 | FE | Perceive by touch; or experience (emotion) |
| 15 | 1 | FE | Cut or knock down (a tree or opponent, e.g.) |
| 16 | 1 | FI | Steal casually or secretly |
| 17 | 1 | FI | Folder of related papers, or tool for smoothing edges (fingernails, e.g.), noun/verb |
| 18 | 1 | FI | Add material until the container or hole is at capacity |
| 19 | 1 | FI | Young ♀ horse |
| 20 | 1 | FL | Run away from danger, NOT a bug that causes itching |
| 21 | 2 | FL | Wool from sheep, or fabric (jacket), noun; or overcharge, slang verb |
| 22 | 1 | HE | Back of your foot (Achilles’ weakness), noun; or (of a dog) follow closely |
| 23 | 1 | HE | Satan’s domain |
| 24 | 2 | HI | What Jack & Jill went up |
| 25 | 1 | IC | Frozen water |
| 26 | 1 | IC | Frozen water spear formed from drips |
| 27 | 1 | IL | Not healthy, sick, adverb/noun; hardly, or only with difficulty, adverb (they could … afford the cost of a new car) |
| 28 | 1 | LE | Womanizer, derogatory slang abbr., or former Polish president Wałęsa |
| 29 | 1 | LE | Bloodsucking worm, noun; habitually exploit or rely on, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 30 | 1 | LI | Itchy hair parasites |
| 31 | 1 | LI | Cereal Mikey prefers, board game, or “death” antonym |
| 32 | 1 | LI | Monet floral subject (water …) |
| 33 | 1 | LY | Small rounded Chinese fruit with sweet white scented flesh, a large central stone, and a thin rough skin (has at least one alternate spelling) |
| 34 | 1 | YE | Shout (Billy Idol’s “Rebel …”) |
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