- Letters: P/ABDLOR
- Words: 32
- Points: 119
- 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. And if AI tries to be too helpful, try prefixing your search with "word for" or "word meaning".
The TL;DR about the site comes after the table.
Past clues are available here |
Today's puzzle
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Table content |
| root # | answers covered | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Horrify (his tasteless jokes … me) |
| 2 | 1 | Electronic tone similar to profanity cover sound; or mistake (usually with –ER); or a weakly hit fly ball in baseball that is too high for the infielders and too short for the outfielders |
| 3 | 1 | Low-pitched horn sound, noun/verb; or a gentle, playful strike, especially on the nose, noun/verb |
| 4 | 1 | Shapeless mass of soft food, noun/verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 5 | 1 | Sag, or hang limply, gerund form is a pangram |
| 6 | 1 | Let fall, verb; or a tiny amount of liquid, noun, gerund form is a pangram |
| 7 | 1 | Tiny desk that can sit on your legs when you're sitting, compound pangram |
| 8 | 1 | Move in an ungainly way in a series of clumsy paces or bounds |
| 9 | 1 | Closed curve |
| 10 | 1 | Gemstone from Australia, October birthstone |
| 11 | 1 | Traditional Mexican shelter roofed with palm leaves or branches, esp. on a beach, noun |
| 12 | 1 | Figurative dark cloud, or funeral "bearer" |
| 13 | 1 | Unhealthy appearance with a lack of color |
| 14 | 1 | Arthropod antenna for touch & taste, or start of medical exam by touch term |
| 15 | 1 | Father, slang |
| 16 | 1 | Pontiff adj. |
| 17 | 1 | Symmetric U-shaped plane curve defined by a quadratic equation |
| 18 | 1 | Release people or supplies from a plane by ‘chute |
| 19 | 1 | Room for receiving guests (dated) |
| 20 | 1 | Legal term for oral agreement |
| 21 | 1 | Walk slowly with heavy steps, gerund form is a pangram |
| 22 | 1 | Sound of Alka–Seltzer before the fizz |
| 23 | 1 | Relating to the extreme northern or southern parts of the Earth; having a positive or negative charge |
| 24 | 1 | Opinion survey, homophone of above (straw, Gallup, e.g.) |
| 25 | 1 | Croquet on horseback |
| 26 | 1 | Swimming venue |
| 27 | 1 | Tire out (I’m …ed); or defecate, slang verb/noun |
| 28 | 1 | Lacking $, or worse than ideal |
| 29 | 1 | Tall, fast-growing tree of north temperate regions |
| 30 | 1 | Daddy |
| 31 | 1 | Poke, nudge, or spur (reluctant person or cattle), verb/noun, gerund form is a pangram |
| 32 | 1 | Support (… up), verb; on-stage object or ballot initiative abbr., noun |
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 social media.
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