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. The Halloween, 2021 redesign improved the usability, I hope.
Past clues are available here
Table content
| root # | answers covered | answer's first two letters | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | BO | 4 | Hippie chic fashion; anagram of "vagrant" |
| 5 | 1 | BO | 4 | Each of 2 things (I’ll take this AND that), adv. |
| 3 | 1 | BO | 5 | Privacy enclosure (voting, phone …), or Lincoln assassin |
| 6 | 1 | BO | 5 | Main tree branch |
| 2 | 1 | BO | 6 | Weeping sound, slang |
| 10 | 1 | BO | 6 | Purchase, verb |
| 4 | 1 | BO | 7 | There are 5 in NY City: Bronx, Queens, etc. |
| 8 | 1 | BR | 5 | Thin soup |
| 7 | 1 | BR | 7 | Lead, carry, or cause to come along with you |
| 9 | 1 | BU | 5 | Scottish chartered town (in the US, Pitts…) |
| 11 | 1 | GO | 4 | Person who wears dark clothing, dark rock genre, or German invader of Rome |
| 12 | 1 | HO | 4 | Tramp, vagrant; anagram of hippie chic fashion |
| 13 | 1 | HO | 4 | Owl sound |
| 15 | 1 | HO | 4 | 60 minutes |
| 14 | 1 | HO | 6 | Scary Steven King genre |
| 17 | 1 | HU | 4 | Injure(physically or emotionally), verb/adj. |
| 16 | 1 | HU | 6 | Chaotic din caused by a crowd of people, rhyming compound noun |
| 18 | 1 | OU | 5 | Should or probable (to), verb |
| 19 | 1 | OU | 10 | Used your brain better than someone else, past tense comparative verb |
| 20 | 1 | RO | 5 | Not smooth (cat’s tongue, sandpaper) |
| 22 | 1 | TH | 4 | Archaic singular “you” (“Romeo, wherefore art …”) |
| 28 | 1 | TH | 4 | Ruffian |
| 25 | 1 | TH | 5 | Beat or pulsate (teenage heart…) |
| 23 | 1 | TH | 6 | Despite the fact that, or however; conjunction or adv. (al-…) |
| 24 | 1 | TH | 7 | Idea or opinion, noun (here’s a…); or used your brain, past tense verb |
| 26 | 1 | TH | 7 | Via |
| 21 | 1 | TH | 8 | Rigorous, meticulous (...understanding, ...examination) |
| 27 | 1 | TH | 10 | In every part of (“English is spoken…the US), starts with above |
| 29 | 1 | TO | 5 | What you chew with |
| 30 | 1 | TO | 5 | Difficult (“… break, kid”) or durable adj. |
| 31 | 1 | TR | 5 | Archaic var. of “honesty”; you pledge your … in marriage vows |
| 33 | 1 | TR | 5 | Honesty (“… or dare”) |
| 32 | 1 | TR | 6 | Long, narrow container for feeding & watering livestock |
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.