- Letters: R/ACINTY
- Words: 59
- Points: 300
- 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 | What you breathe |
| 2 | 1 | Deep-fried sicilian rice balls |
| 3 | 1 | 1 of 2 classes in a tarot pack (major & minor), a mystery or deep secret, or specialized knowledge, noun |
| 4 | 2 | North Pole adj. (… Circle or Ocean) |
| 5 | 1 | Opera solo |
| 6 | 1 | Yellow daisy used to treat bruises |
| 7 | 1 | Complete & utter (nonsense), archaic adj. |
| 8 | 1 | Ordered series, esp. math |
| 9 | 1 | Creative activity: painting, music, literature, dance, etc |
| 10 | 1 | Large open-air or skylight covered space surrounded by a building, common in ancient Roman houses; an upper cavity of the heart |
| 11 | 1 | Flower oil for perfume |
| 12 | 2 | Entice, lure, or evoke (… attention; opposites …), verb |
| 13 | 1 | Pile of commemorative stones, or terrier (dog) breed |
| 14 | 1 | Small bird, popular as a pet, once used as a monitor for poison gas (… in a coal mine) |
| 15 | 1 | Unit of weight for gems, NOT bunny food |
| 16 | 1 | Person who works in a traveling amusement (slang) |
| 17 | 1 | Lug around (fireman’s …), verb |
| 18 | 1 | Shopping trolley you push |
| 19 | 1 | Eye cloudiness, or waterfall |
| 20 | 1 | “Around” when used before a year, Latin |
| 21 | 1 | Cloud forming wispy streaks (“mare's tails”) at high altitude |
| 22 | 1 | Tree genus that includes lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit, or the fruit of those trees |
| 23 | 1 | Scientific name for skull |
| 24 | 1 | Small, narrow space or opening |
| 25 | 1 | Fault-finder (“everyone’s a …”), or arts & dining reviewer |
| 26 | 1 | Very complicated or detailed, pangram (noun form is also a pangram) |
| 27 | 1 | Make someone annoyed, impatient, or angry; or cause inflammation |
| 28 | 1 | Drug cop, slang |
| 29 | 1 | Dialectic negation (I survived with … a scratch) |
| 30 | 1 | Adj. for element 7, most abundant one in air (acid) |
| 31 | 1 | Lively, entertaining, & mildly sexual; adj. (think car or horse speed contest) |
| 32 | 2 | Liquid precipitation |
| 33 | 1 | Indian yogurt veg dip |
| 34 | 1 | Hindu queen, anagram of liquid precipitation |
| 35 | 1 | Speak or shout wildly & at length |
| 36 | 1 | Uncommon; steak served with red inside |
| 37 | 1 | Sewer-dwelling rodent |
| 38 | 1 | Machine gun sound |
| 39 | 1 | Palm fiber for furniture |
| 40 | 1 | Poison from castor beans, NOT a pilaf grain |
| 41 | 1 | Onomatopoetic name for war trumpet |
| 42 | 2 | Hindu/Buddhist mystical text, involving sex |
| 43 | 1 | Dark, thick, flammable liquid distilled from wood or coal |
| 44 | 1 | Open filled pastry, noun; or sharp taste, adj. |
| 45 | 1 | Plaid patterned Scottish cloth |
| 46 | 1 | Fish sauce, or tooth buildup |
| 47 | 1 | Jeweled, ornamental ½ crown |
| 48 | 1 | Large land area, or body passage (“digestive …”) |
| 49 | 1 | Choo-choo, or prep for athletic event |
| 50 | 1 | Characteristic, often genetically determined (left-handedness, e.g.) |
| 51 | 1 | Use it to carry drinks or a cafeteria meal |
| 52 | 1 | Christian doctrine of God in three persons; or first test of a nuclear bomb |
| 53 | 2 | Cruel and/or oppressive ruler |
| 54 | 1 | Knitting thread, or wild story |
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