- Letters: H/ILNORT
- Words: 20
- Points: 88
- 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
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| root # | answers covered | answer's first letter | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | H | What Jack & Jill went up |
| 2 | 1 | H | Sword or dagger handle |
| 3 | 1 | H | Clue, suggestion, noun/verb |
| 4 | 1 | H | Otter den |
| 5 | 1 | H | High respect/great esteem; noun/verb |
| 6 | 1 | H | Owl sound, noun/verb |
| 7 | 1 | H | Hard body part in some animals; many have two, but one large Asian animal has one, while its African cousin has a large one and a small one |
| 8 | 1 | H | Scary Steven King genre |
| 9 | 1 | L | Print made with a flat surface treated so as to repel the ink except where it is required for printing |
| 10 | 1 | N | Number of justices on Supreme Court |
| 11 | 1 | N | Opposite of south |
| 12 | 1 | R | Large animal with one horn (or two) above its nose |
| 13 | 1 | T | Skinny, adj. (… Mints) |
| 14 | 1 | T | Sharp point grown by some plants as protection |
| 15 | 1 | T | Sudden feeling of excitement & pleasure (the … of plummeting on a roller coaster), noun/verb |
| 16 | 1 | T | Cultivation of land, or prepped soil surface, noun; rhymes with “extreme dirt” synonym |
| 17 | 1 | T | Person who pretends to have money, ability, or influence (19th century North American word - I associate it with the Old West), compound made from element 50 + hard body part on some animals |
| 18 | 1 | T | What you chew with |
| 19 | 1 | T | A million million (1 followed by 12 zeros), ordinal form is a pangram |
| 20 | 1 | T | Archaic var. of “honesty”; you pledge your … in marriage vows |
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