- Letters: T/CDNORU
- Words: 45
- Points: 198
- Pangrams: 2
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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 | C | Tropical fruit in Mounds & Piña Colada |
| 2 | 1 | C | Create a mixed drink, potion, or wild story |
| 3 | 2 | C | Behavior, noun (disorderly …); or lead an orchestra, verb; or allow electricity to flow, verb, noun form and negated noun form are pangrams |
| 4 | 1 | C | Twist or bend out of the normal shape |
| 5 | 1 | C | Outline, or mold into a specific shape designed to fit snugly, verb |
| 6 | 1 | C | Foolish old ♂, or water bird |
| 7 | 1 | C | Soft fabric or its plant source |
| 8 | 1 | C | Tally, verb; or title for Dracula & Monte Cristo, noun |
| 9 | 1 | C | Where trials are held |
| 10 | 1 | C | Dried bread cube on a salad |
| 11 | 1 | C | Rudely brief, adj. |
| 13 | 1 | C | Cardboard person (how you make one), or spy intermediary, compound |
| 14 | 1 | D | “Who” travels in a TARDIS, or physician + degree they & professors hold; adjective form of the degree is a pangram |
| 15 | 1 | D | Ring-shaped fried cake, modern spelling, older spelling is a pangram |
| 16 | 1 | D | Air conduit in a home or building (dryer …), or tube in a body (tear …) |
| 3 | 1 | N | Behavior, noun (disorderly …); or lead an orchestra, verb; or allow electricity to flow, verb, noun form and negated noun form are pangrams |
| 17 | 1 | O | Preposition when mounting an animal or boarding a large vehicle |
| 18 | 1 | O | Full, round, and imposing voice; or pompous writing |
| 19 | 1 | O | One-up, surpass, compound verb |
| 20 | 1 | O | opposite of inside the house, adj., compound |
| 21 | 1 | O | Closing show music (antonym begins with IN–) |
| 22 | 1 | O | Sprint more quickly or farther in a footrace than someone else, compound |
| 23 | 1 | R | Plant anchor that sucks up water |
| 24 | 1 | R | Device or blade that spins |
| 25 | 1 | R | Plump (Saint Nick might be called this) |
| 26 | 1 | R | Disorderly retreat, or decisive defeat |
| 27 | 1 | R | Slight error in rotating tool, compound |
| 28 | 1 | R | Smallest of the litter |
| 29 | 1 | T | Animated film or character, slang abbr. (car…) |
| 30 | 1 | T | Short horn sound; noun/verb |
| 31 | 1 | T | Ripped, adj. or past participle |
| 32 | 1 | T | Bull, Spanish |
| 33 | 1 | T | Legal wrong, NOT pastry |
| 34 | 1 | T | Take a guided one of these in a foreign city (on a … bus?) adj/noun/verb |
| 35 | 1 | T | Promote, or offer horse racing tips |
| 36 | 1 | T | Step on; snake flag motto "Don't … on me" |
| 37 | 1 | T | Fast walking pace for horses or people |
| 38 | 1 | T | Common game fish (rainbow …, e.g.) |
| 39 | 1 | T | Change direction, verb/noun/adj. (use your … signal when driving!) |
| 40 | 1 | T | Number of people who show up at an event (we had a great … last night for our poetry reading), compound |
| 41 | 1 | T | Private instructor |
| 42 | 1 | T | Ballet skirt, or S Afr Bishop Desmond |
| 12 | 1 | U | Divide into pieces with a knife or other sharp implement, verb/noun |
| 43 | 1 | U | Archaic preposition (Handel’s Messiah “For … us a child is born”) |
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