- Letters: P/ACIMNO
- Words: 31
- Points: 153
- 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 | Bee-related adj. |
| 2 | 1 | Live temporarily in a tent, verb/noun |
| 3 | 1 | Grass plain with occasional stunted trees |
| 4 | 1 | Referring to a jar in which the ancient Egyptians preserved the viscera of a deceased person, adj. |
| 5 | 1 | Mafia boss, or moveable bar on a guitar |
| 6 | 1 | Castrated chicken fattened for eating |
| 7 | 1 | Italian–American fish stew from San Francisco |
| 8 | 1 | Provide for free (entry ticket, hotel room, drinks), slang abbr. |
| 9 | 1 | Someone who goes along with you (traveling …), pangram noun |
| 10 | 1 | Chicken pen, noun; or confine in a small space, verb (…ed up) |
| 11 | 1 | Special abbreviated training camp for football players held usually in the spring or early summer |
| 12 | 1 | Silly-sounding long word for a fool or idiot |
| 13 | 1 | Belief or judgment (In my humble …) |
| 14 | 1 | Sensation from an injury, noun/verb |
| 15 | 1 | S Am treeless grassland |
| 16 | 1 | Cent. Am. country with a canal & hat |
| 17 | 1 | Lose your cool in a crisis (at the disco?) |
| 18 | 1 | Toasted Italian sandwich |
| 19 | 1 | Father, slang |
| 20 | 1 | Liberace’s instrument (also Billy Joel's and John Legend's, not to mention Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Clara Schumann, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Glenn Gould) |
| 21 | 1 | A printed type size, or medical condition that makes you want to eat non-foods |
| 22 | 1 | Outdoor dining on a blanket (from a basket?), noun/verb (past tense is a pangram) |
| 23 | 1 | ♂ who controls prostitutes, noun/verb |
| 24 | 1 | Part of bird wing, or small gear engaging with large one (as in “rack & …” steering) |
| 25 | 1 | Fosse musical about Charlemagne’s son, or apple variety |
| 26 | 1 | Flowering plant in the bean family with fern-like leaves and flamboyant orange-red flowers (Delonix regia) |
| 27 | 1 | Ceremonial public display (Elgar’s “… & Circumstance March” at graduations) |
| 28 | 1 | Marine game fish, or “… Beach,” city N of Ft. Lauderdale |
| 29 | 1 | Cheerleader accessory |
| 30 | 1 | Tire out (I’m …ed); or defecate, slang verb/noun |
| 31 | 1 | Daddy |
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