- Letters: C/AIMORT
- Words: 63
- Points: 297
- 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
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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 | A | African or Australian wattle tree |
| 2 | 1 | A | Trendy smoothie berry |
| 3 | 1 | A | Do something |
| 4 | 1 | A | Main blood pipe from heart |
| 5 | 1 | A | Musically, “with the bow,” or gas brand |
| 6 | 1 | A | North Pole adj. (… Circle or Ocean) |
| 7 | 1 | A | Pleasant smell (baking bread, e.g.), adj. form is a pangram |
| 8 | 1 | A | Basic unit of matter, “… Ant” superhero, noun/adjective (… bomb), adj. form that means just one of these is a pangram, and so is the noun form that means breaking down into basic units |
| 9 | 1 | A | Unfinished room below roof; garret |
| 10 | 2 | A | Entice, lure, or evoke (… attention; opposites …), verb |
| 11 | 1 | C | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 12 | 1 | C | Succulent plant with a thick stem that usually has spines, lacks leaves, and occasionally has brilliantly colored flowers |
| 13 | 1 | C | ♀ sleeveless undergarment top, slang abbr. |
| 14 | 1 | C | Clothing that helps you hide, slang abbr. |
| 15 | 1 | C | Unit of weight for gems, NOT bunny food |
| 16 | 1 | C | Bounce off or glance off an object or cushion |
| 17 | 1 | C | Orange veg that bunnies eat |
| 18 | 1 | C | Shopping trolley you push |
| 19 | 1 | C | Eye cloudiness, or waterfall |
| 20 | 1 | C | “Hi” or “Bye” in Italian (“… bella”) |
| 21 | 1 | C | “Around” when used before a year, Latin |
| 22 | 1 | C | Cloud forming wispy streaks (“mare's tails”) at high altitude |
| 23 | 1 | C | Tree genus that includes lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit, or the fruit of those trees |
| 24 | 1 | C | Outdoor jacket (trench-…) |
| 25 | 1 | C | Central American raccoon |
| 26 | 1 | C | Where you check your outerwear (compound) |
| 27 | 1 | C | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 28 | 1 | C | Spherical or nearly spherical bacterium |
| 29 | 1 | C | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 30 | 1 | C | Fiber from the outer husk of the coconut, used for making ropes & matting |
| 31 | 1 | C | Prolonged unconscious state |
| 32 | 1 | C | Paid jokester, or “… book” with superheroes |
| 33 | 1 | C | Curly punctuation mark that separates phrases |
| 34 | 1 | C | Perpetrate, pledge, or put into a mental ward, noun that means the act or process of doing this is a pangram |
| 35 | 1 | C | Foolish old ♂, or water bird |
| 36 | 1 | C | Study intensely just before a test (stuff facts into your brain), or stuff into a box; verb |
| 37 | 1 | C | Fault-finder (“everyone’s a …”), or arts & dining reviewer |
| 38 | 1 | C | Holey shoe, or alligator relative abbr. |
| 39 | 1 | C | Small plant that blooms early in spring |
| 40 | 1 | M | Opposite of micro |
| 41 | 1 | M | Rattle shaken in music |
| 42 | 1 | M | Flaky rock that breaks off in sheets |
| 43 | 1 | M | Prefix meaning small (-scope, -phone) |
| 44 | 1 | M | Parrot someone’s speaking & mannerisms, verb; or the person doing it, noun |
| 45 | 1 | M | Casablanca’s country; or goatskin leather tanned with sumac, originally made there |
| 46 | 1 | M | Dated synonym for automobile |
| 47 | 1 | O | Killer “whale” |
| 48 | 1 | R | Italian cheese used in lasagna |
| 49 | 1 | R | Ornamental decorative style from the late Baroque |
| 50 | 1 | R | Amorous & funny film genre, slang abbr. |
| 51 | 1 | T | Understood without being stated (… agreement), adj. |
| 52 | 1 | T | Mexican filled tortilla, or “… Bell” restaurant |
| 53 | 1 | T | Diplomacy, sensitivity |
| 54 | 1 | T | Action planned to achieve a specific end (negotiating …) |
| 55 | 1 | T | Airport runway area |
| 56 | 1 | T | Virtuoso musical piece (Bach’s “… & Fugue in D Minor”) |
| 57 | 1 | T | ♂ feline, compound that starts with a ♂ name (Selleck, Petty, e.g.) |
| 58 | 1 | T | Donut shape |
| 59 | 1 | T | Large land area, or body passage (“digestive …”) |
| 60 | 1 | T | Farm vehicle for towing |
| 61 | 1 | T | Single unit of a public transit vehicle, compound noun |
| 62 | 1 | T | Fine-knitted fabric, from French “to knit” |
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