- Letters: R/ABDIMN
- Words: 50
- Points: 215
- 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 |
| root # | answers covered | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Flying ♂, compound |
| 2 | 1 | Opera solo |
| 3 | 1 | Dry (climate or land), adj. |
| 4 | 1 | Warship fleet (Spanish one defeated by England in 1588) |
| 5 | 1 | Cloth strip worn on your biceps, such as a black one for mourning, compound |
| 6 | 1 | Sharp projection near end of fishhook or on top of wire fence; start of Streisand name |
| 7 | 1 | An uncivilized or primitive person |
| 8 | 1 | Archaic term for “poet”; Shakespeare’s “… of Avon” nickname |
| 9 | 1 | Serving ♀ at a tavern, compound |
| 10 | 1 | Serving ♂ at a tavern, compound |
| 11 | 1 | Large farm bldg. for storage & livestock |
| 12 | 1 | An avian; it has wings & a beak (crow, robin, etc.) |
| 13 | 1 | Annoyingly stupid and shallow person, compound made from feathered flying creature + organ of thought |
| 14 | 1 | Mexican dish of stewed meat seasoned with chili peppers |
| 15 | 1 | Small nail, or Janet's hubby in “Rocky Horror” |
| 16 | 1 | Hair or challah weave, noun/verb |
| 17 | 1 | What you think with (or, in the case of some men, what you should think with); or hit someone in the head, verb |
| 18 | 1 | Grain husk (Raisin … cereal) |
| 19 | 1 | Identifying mark burned on livestock, noun/verb; or name of a company that offers multiple products, noun/verb |
| 20 | 1 | Prickly shrub (… patch) |
| 21 | 1 | Projecting edge on a hat base (such as a ballcap bill) |
| 22 | 1 | Mild exclamation; or mend holes in socks, verb |
| 23 | 1 | Arab $, not supper |
| 24 | 1 | Dull, lacking brightness or interest, adj. |
| 25 | 1 | What sink water goes down |
| 26 | 1 | Scottish whisky serving size, ⅛ oz. |
| 27 | 1 | Serious or exciting play, show, film, or events (Don’t be such a … queen!), adj. form is a pangram |
| 28 | 1 | Archaic word for a very small amount, noun; or to let fall, verb; …s & [dreary and dull]s; start of bouncing a game orb when moving on the court, or what small amounts of liquid do when falling |
| 29 | 1 | Primary Chinese dialect, or colorful duck species |
| 30 | 1 | Percussion instrument with wooden bars & resonators |
| 31 | 1 | Place to tie up boats |
| 32 | 1 | Tomato pasta sauce |
| 33 | 1 | Old-timey schoolteacher honorific |
| 34 | 1 | Location descriptor of plane “collision” that occurs in the sky |
| 35 | 1 | (Anatomy) mesencephalon; deals with vision & hearing; pangram |
| 36 | 1 | (Botany) central vein of a leaf (think central chest cage bone) |
| 37 | 1 | Hotel fridge with overpriced drinks & snacks |
| 38 | 1 | Sweet Japanese cooking wine made from fermented rice |
| 39 | 1 | Lowest point, rock-bottom, depths; or below the observer in astronomy |
| 40 | 1 | Jewish minister or teacher |
| 41 | 1 | Adj. for a dog frothing at the mouth or a fanatical person |
| 42 | 1 | Nickname of Cpl. O’Reilly in M.A.S.H., or Doppler weather sensor acronym |
| 43 | 1 | Unit of angular measure |
| 44 | 1 | Distance from a point on a circle to the center |
| 45 | 1 | Sudden attack, as in “air” or police;” or insect spray |
| 46 | 1 | Liquid precipitation |
| 47 | 1 | Covered porch, or hotel brand |
| 48 | 1 | Kirk’s Yeoman Janice on Star Trek, or South African $ |
| 49 | 1 | Hindu queen, anagram of liquid precipitation |
| 50 | 1 | Tough outer skin of certain fruit, especially citrus |
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