- Letters: O/ACHILT
- Words: 63
- Points: 244
- 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 | What a sneeze sounds like |
| 2 | 1 | Garlic mayonnaise, from French for garlic |
| 3 | 2 | Booze, chemically, negative adj. form is a pangram |
| 4 | 1 | Apportion $ or other resource (time, e.g.) |
| 5 | 1 | Hawaiian greeting |
| 6 | 1 | Sax smaller than a tenor, or voice higher than one |
| 7 | 1 | Coral island (Bikini, e.g.) |
| 8 | 1 | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 9 | 1 | Rough cotton fabric, or colorful cat |
| 10 | 1 | Caribbean veg dish |
| 11 | 1 | Including a wide variety of things, all-embracing (used in the name of the pope's church), pangram |
| 12 | 1 | Complete disorder and confusion |
| 13 | 1 | Person addicted to Hershey or Mars bars |
| 14 | 1 | “Hi” or “Bye” in Italian (“… bella”) |
| 15 | 1 | Combo sex & waste cavity in non-mammals |
| 16 | 1 | Lump of blood that stops bleeding or circulation |
| 17 | 1 | Fabric |
| 18 | 1 | Athletic instructor or trainer, noun/verb; or bus, noun |
| 19 | 1 | “Dirty fuel” dug from mines; what Santa puts in your stocking if you’re bad |
| 20 | 1 | Outdoor jacket (trench-…) |
| 21 | 1 | Central American raccoon |
| 22 | 1 | Flap on lower back of jacket; popular politicians have long ones, inverse of formal jacket list word, compound |
| 23 | 1 | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 24 | 1 | Spherical or nearly spherical bacterium |
| 25 | 1 | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 26 | 1 | Silver Pacific salmon |
| 27 | 1 | Wind up spirally, verb/noun (Hamlet’s “mortal …”) |
| 28 | 1 | Relating to sexual intercourse, formal adj. |
| 29 | 1 | Pepsi & RC dark brown soda flavor |
| 30 | 1 | Baby or horse upset tummy |
| 31 | 1 | Young ♂ horse |
| 32 | 1 | “Warm” antonym, or “neat!” |
| 33 | 1 | Foolish old ♂, or water bird |
| 34 | 1 | Nimbus (ring of light or glowing cloud) atop a saint, or Xbox shooter game |
| 35 | 1 | Otter den |
| 36 | 1 | Cheap liquor |
| 37 | 1 | Owl sound, noun/verb |
| 38 | 1 | 9th Greek letter, I; or extremely small amount |
| 39 | 1 | Print made with a flat surface treated so as to repel the ink except where it is required for printing |
| 40 | 1 | Fish family that includes the “clown”, or English filmmaker Ken (“I, Daniel Blake”) |
| 41 | 1 | Reluctant (to), adj.; often confused with verb ending in E meaning “hate” |
| 42 | 1 | From a nearby area, or a train making all stops |
| 43 | 1 | Scottish body of water where Nessie lives |
| 44 | 1 | Crazy, Spanish |
| 45 | 1 | A particular point or place |
| 46 | 1 | Hang out or droop, as a dog’s tongue |
| 47 | 1 | Pirate treasure, noun; or to steal during a riot, verb |
| 48 | 1 | State-sponsored numbers betting ticket (Powerball, e.g.) |
| 49 | 1 | Vow or pledge (you’re under one in court testimony) |
| 50 | 1 | Base–8 number system |
| 51 | 1 | Fabric treated with linseed on one side to make it waterproof |
| 52 | 1 | Mixture, or spicy Spanish stew, NOT margarine |
| 53 | 1 | Mexican filled tortilla, or “… Bell” restaurant |
| 54 | 1 | Formal ♂ dinner jacket worn with a white bowtie, compound |
| 55 | 1 | Skin “ink” |
| 56 | 1 | Virtuoso musical piece (Bach’s “… & Fugue in D Minor”) |
| 57 | 1 | Work hard (… away, trying to find the last few Spelling Bee words) |
| 58 | 1 | Road use fee (paid at a booth) |
| 59 | 1 | An implement (hammer & screwdriver, e.g.); often stored in a …box |
| 60 | 1 | Short horn sound; noun/verb |
| 61 | 1 | What you chew with |
| 62 | 1 | The whole amount (sum of numbers, e.g.) |
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