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. The TL;DR about the site comes after the table.
Past clues are available here
Table content
| clue # | words covered | root 1st letter | clue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | A | African or Australian wattle tree |
| 2 | 1 | A | Trendy smoothie berry |
| 3 | 1 | C | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 4 | 1 | C | Harden because of calcium deposits |
| 5 | 1 | C | Baby cow |
| 6 | 1 | C | Rough cotton fabric, or colorful cat |
| 7 | 1 | C | Phone, name, summon, or shout (out) |
| 8 | 1 | C | Arum plant referred to as a lily |
| 9 | 1 | C | Caribbean veg dish |
| 10 | 1 | C | “Hi” or “Bye” in Italian (“… bella”) |
| 11 | 1 | C | Short microscopic hairlike vibrating structure found in large numbers on the surface of certain cells; (anatomy) eyelash |
| 12 | 1 | C | Dirt used to make ceramic pots, or boxer Ali former name |
| 13 | 1 | C | Steep rock face (white ones of Dover) |
| 14 | 1 | C | Combo sex & waste cavity in non-mammals |
| 15 | 1 | C | Sicken with sweetness |
| 16 | 1 | C | “Dirty fuel” dug from mines; what Santa puts in your stocking if you’re bad |
| 17 | 1 | C | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 18 | 1 | C | Spherical or nearly spherical bacterium |
| 19 | 1 | C | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 20 | 1 | C | Style someone’s hair, verb/noun |
| 21 | 1 | C | Wind up spirally, or Hamlet’s “mortal ...” |
| 22 | 1 | C | Pepsi & RC dark brown soda flavor |
| 23 | 1 | C | Baby or horse upset tummy |
| 24 | 2 | C | “Warm” antonym, or “neat!” |
| 25 | 1 | C | Reluctant to give details, especially about something regarded as sensitive |
| 26 | 3 | C | Ride a bike; series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order |
| 27 | 1 | C | Regularly repeated, (○ related adj., like a bike’s full name) |
| 28 | 2 | F | Front part of head containing eyes, nose, & mouth 😀; noun/verb |
| 29 | 1 | F | Belief based on unsound reasoning |
| 30 | 1 | F | Flat Italian bread made with yeast and olive oil and flavored with herbs |
| 31 | 2 | F | Center of interest or activity, noun; adjust a camera to get a clear image, verb |
| 32 | 1 | F | B-vitamin that treats anemia (… acid) |
| 33 | 1 | I | Frozen water |
| 34 | 1 | I | Hip bone |
| 35 | 1 | L | Frilly; adj. for cuff, collar, & sexy underwear fabric |
| 36 | 2 | L | Non-cleric + non-clerical |
| 37 | 1 | L | Purple flower or shade |
| 38 | 2 | L | From a nearby area, or a train making all stops |
| 39 | 1 | L | Crazy, Spanish |
| 40 | 1 | L | A particular point or place |
| 41 | 2 | O | Confirmed by an authority (it's …); someone who throws penalty flags |
This site provides clues for a day's New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle. It exists to make it easier for Kevin Davis to take a day off. Most of the clues come from him. There may be some startup problems, but long term I think I can put the clues together with no more than half an hour's work.
The "Bee Roots" approach is to provide explicit clues for root words, not every word. This is similar to what Kevin Davis does, but without information about parts of speech 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.
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
Many thanks to Kevin Davis, whose 4,500-word clue list made this possible.