- Letters: R/GIMNOU
- Words: 57
- Points: 320
- Pangrams: 3
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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 |
| root # | answers covered | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Blood that has been shed, especially as a result of violence, noun; or pierce or stab with a horn or tusk, verb |
| 2 | 1 | A narrow valley, usually with steep rocky walls noun; or eat way too much, verb |
| 3 | 1 | 3 Greek sisters with snakes for hair & petrifying gazes |
| 4 | 1 | Forbidding, uninviting, humorless, depressing |
| 5 | 2 | Smile broadly, verb/noun |
| 6 | 1 | Watered-down (nautical) rum |
| 7 | 1 | Area of your hip between your abdomen & thigh (I pulled my … playing football) |
| 8 | 2 | Bride’s ♂ counterpart, noun; or brush & clean yourself or an animal |
| 9 | 1 | Indian spiritual teacher |
| 10 | 1 | Pay no attention to someone or something |
| 11 | 1 | Accustom someone to something unpleasant |
| 12 | 1 | Transfer ashes to a ceramic receptacle after cremation (similar in construction to enhalo), verb |
| 13 | 2 | Element Fe (atomic number 26), or hot clothes presser, noun/verb |
| 14 | 2 | Less important (… detail) or musical chord type, adj., or an underage person, or a secondary focus in college, noun/verb |
| 15 | 1 | Stretch of swampy ground, noun; or cause to be stuck in mud, verb; or figuratively, involve someone in a difficult situation that's hard to get out of, verb/noun |
| 16 | 1 | Sweet Japanese cooking wine made from fermented rice |
| 17 | 2 | Looking glass (“Who’s the fairest of them all?”) |
| 18 | 4 | Othello (“The …”), noun; or tract of open uncultivated upland (British noun); or tie up a boat, verb, negated gerund form is a pangram |
| 19 | 1 | Poetic start of day, NOT lament the dead; + period before midday |
| 20 | 1 | The part of the day before noon |
| 21 | 1 | Idiot |
| 22 | 2 | Lament the dead, NOT poetic start of the day; verb + pangram gerund (He’s still in … for his late wife) |
| 23 | 2 | Soft, indistinct sound (noun/verb) |
| 24 | 1 | Sushi consisting of a small ball of rice smeared with wasabi sauce and topped with raw fish or other seafood |
| 25 | 1 | “Black” in French; or dark mystery genre (film …) |
| 26 | 1 | Edible seaweed, eaten either fresh or dried in sheets |
| 27 | 1 | Standard (noun), or former SNL Weekend Update comic Macdonald |
| 28 | 1 | Point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived; noun (the adj. “natant” is Latin in…) |
| 29 | 3 | Make a boat ready for sailing by providing it with sails and rope (gerund form can also be a noun); or an apparatus for drilling or pumping oil |
| 30 | 1 | Thoroughness or stiffness (… mortis) |
| 31 | 1 | The edge of a bowl or crater, noun; or act as an outer edge for something, verb |
| 32 | 3 | Make a bell sound, verb/noun; encircle, verb/noun |
| 33 | 2 | Chamber of a house (kitchen, bed…, bath…), noun/verb |
| 34 | 1 | Red powder or cream used as a cosmetic, noun/verb from French |
| 35 | 1 | Regret, verb; or perennial evergreen shrub with bitter strong-scented lobed leaves, noun |
| 36 | 2 | Destroy, verb (eating snacks before dinner will … your appetite) |
| 37 | 2 | Scuttlebutt, gossip (… has it), noun/verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 38 | 1 | Move fast on foot |
| 39 | 1 | Strong desire or impulse, noun/verb |
| 40 | 1 | Vase used for storing ashes |
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