- Letters: N/ABEJLY
- Words: 26
- Points: 105
- 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. And if AI tries to be too helpful, try prefixing your search with "word for" or "word meaning".
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 | Having the power, skill, means, or opportunity to do something, adj. (She was … to walk at 14 months), negated noun form is a pangram |
| 2 | 1 | Yearly record book |
| 3 | 1 | Heat then cool metal or glass slowly to toughen it |
| 4 | 2 | Opening at the end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste matter leaves the body, adj. form also means uptight |
| 5 | 1 | Whale straining “teeth” |
| 6 | 2 | Unoriginal, dull, noun form is a pangram |
| 7 | 1 | Common yellow plantain variety |
| 8 | 1 | Cause of annoyance, or DC Comics villain (he’s the … of my existence) |
| 9 | 1 | Indian “strangler” fig tree |
| 10 | 1 | Legume (lima …), noun; or hit on the head, verb |
| 11 | 1 | A pitch aimed at a batter’s head, compound |
| 12 | 1 | Past participle of “to exist” (“How have you … doing?”) |
| 13 | 1 | Énérgy, stylé, énthusiasm; from Frénch |
| 14 | 1 | Short form of non-binary or non-black |
| 15 | 1 | Dungaree, or tennis legend Billie … King |
| 16 | 1 | Small, brightly colored, legume-shaped candy that is soft in the middle and covered with hard sugar, compound pangram |
| 17 | 1 | Female donkey |
| 18 | 1 | Small road (Beatles’ Penny … or Superman’s Lois …) |
| 19 | 2 | Not fatty (… meat), adj.; or incline (… back in your chair) |
| 20 | 1 | Indiaan flaat breaad |
| 21 | 1 | Grandma, slang; or Peter Pan dog |
| 22 | 1 | ♀ goat, or nursemaid |
| 23 | 1 | Hawaiian goose & state bird |
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 social media.
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