- Letters: O/GINTUW
- Words: 56
- Points: 284
- 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 | 2 | Leave; move from one place to another |
| 2 | 2 | Orchestra chime or dinner bell |
| 3 | 1 | Ruffian |
| 4 | 1 | Make a groove with a sharp tool; overcharge (figurative) |
| 5 | 1 | Swollen foot disease from excess uric acid; Ben Franklin had it |
| 6 | 2 | Long dress worn on formal occasions, noun/verb |
| 7 | 1 | Catch fire, or cause to do so |
| 8 | 1 | Bar of precious metal |
| 9 | 1 | Enter (go … the room), preposition |
| 10 | 1 | Recite with little rise & fall of pitch (the minister …-ed the prayer) |
| 11 | 1 | TurboTax company, or know by feeling rather than evidence |
| 12 | 1 | Head, slang (use your …) |
| 13 | 1 | 12:00, midday, 🕛 |
| 14 | 1 | What you pass to someone in class, or ♪ in music |
| 15 | 1 | Vague idea, or small sewing accessory |
| 16 | 1 | In grammar, a person, place or thing |
| 17 | 1 | Veg that makes you cry when cut (for some, this is the "dreaded root veg") |
| 18 | 1 | Preposition when mounting an animal or boarding a large vehicle |
| 19 | 2 | $ spent, to a CPA, literal opposite of “income”; or, in gerund form, extroverted, compound |
| 20 | 2 | Have better or more weapons (pistols), or surpass in power, compound |
| 21 | 1 | Day trip, noun, or revealing that someone’s gay, gerund |
| 22 | 2 | Defeat someone by superior cleverness, gerund form is a pangram |
| 23 | 1 | Have an obligation to pay or repay |
| 24 | 1 | Possess, verb; or something that belongs to you, pronoun (I got QB on my …) |
| 25 | 1 | Clothes (informal, usually plural), noun; or get dressed up, verb |
| 26 | 1 | Character of sound, a sound (dial or ring-); noun; give greater strength or firmness to a body or a muscle; verb |
| 27 | 2 | Chinese mafia, or BBQ grabber if plural (or used as a verb) |
| 28 | 1 | Mouth muscle |
| 29 | 1 | Animated film or character, slang abbr. (car…) |
| 30 | 2 | Short horn sound; noun/verb |
| 31 | 1 | Reusable bag, noun; or schlep, verb |
| 32 | 2 | Promote, or offer horse racing tips |
| 33 | 1 | Pull a vehicle with a rope, chain, or bar, verb/noun |
| 34 | 1 | Place smaller than a city & larger than a village |
| 35 | 1 | College fee |
| 36 | 2 | Labor org. (Teamsters, AFL-CIO); or in math, what you get from putting sets together |
| 37 | 1 | Archaic preposition (Handel’s Messiah “For … us a child is born”) |
| 38 | 1 | Be victorious in a game or battle |
| 39 | 2 | Separate chaff from grain, or narrow down to the best (… out) |
| 40 | 1 | Someone who overuses fermented grape juice, slang |
| 41 | 1 | Literary noun & adj. for “custom” (as was her …, he was … to), or contraction of “will not” |
| 42 | 1 | Chinese dumpling (… soup) |
| 43 | 1 | Seek the favor or support of someone; or try to convince someone to marry you |
| 44 | 1 | Slang exclamation of elation, or Amazon daily deals siteag motto "Don't … on me" |
| 45 | 1 | Exclamanation expressing astonishment or admiration; or greatly impress someone, verb |
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