- Letters: R/ACKLOW
- Words: 33
- Points: 128
- 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 two letters | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | AR | 4 | Musically, “with the bow,” or gas brand |
| 2 | 1 | AR | 5 | What you shoot with a bow |
| 3 | 1 | CA | 5 | Actress Burnett with a variety show, or a Xmas song |
| 4 | 1 | CL | 9 | Machinery inside a mechanical device for telling time (compound) |
| 8 | 1 | CO | 4 | Wine bottle stopper |
| 6 | 1 | CO | 5 | Red, green, blue, purple, etc. |
| 7 | 1 | CO | 5 | Reef building marine invertebrates, a deep pink hue, or a sea off Australia |
| 5 | 1 | CO | 6 | Cloth or leather strip a dog or cat wears around its neck |
| 10 | 1 | CO | 6 | Animal pen, or “O.K...” gunfight site |
| 9 | 1 | CO | 7 | Small Toyota sedan, or the inner ring of flower petals |
| 12 | 1 | CR | 4 | Food storage & pre-digestion pouch in birds (stuck in my...) |
| 15 | 1 | CR | 4 | Holey shoe, or alligator relative abbr. |
| 18 | 1 | CR | 4 | Large bird with mostly glossy black plumage, a heavy bill, and a raucous voice; or what you are said to eat when ashamed of being proven wrong (slang) |
| 11 | 1 | CR | 5 | Slang for cocaine you smoke, or fracture line, noun + adj. |
| 13 | 1 | CR | 5 | Move forward on the hands and knees, verb; or swimming stroke, noun |
| 14 | 1 | CR | 5 | Frog sound, or slang for “die” |
| 16 | 1 | CR | 5 | Slow-cooking “pot” |
| 17 | 1 | CR | 5 | Lawbreaker, slang (Nixon: “I’m not a …”), or shepherd’s staff |
| 19 | 1 | LA | 4 | Small, ground-dwelling songbird (meadow…), or something done for fun (he entered the race on a …) |
| 20 | 1 | OA | 7 | Metal gadget on a boat that holds the thing with which you row (compound) |
| 21 | 1 | OK | 4 | Green veg in gumbo |
| 22 | 1 | OR | 4 | Spoken (… exam), or by mouth (… surgery), adjective |
| 23 | 1 | OR | 4 | Killer “whale” |
| 24 | 1 | RA | 4 | Frame used to lock up bikes, set up billiards balls, organize spices, or dry dishes, e.g. |
| 25 | 1 | RO | 4 | Lion “shout” |
| 26 | 1 | RO | 4 | Stone (Dwayne Johnson, with "The"); or what you do with a baby's cradle but shouldn't do with a boat, verb |
| 28 | 1 | RO | 4 | What you do to dice, verb; or Tootsie candy & small bread format, noun |
| 29 | 1 | RO | 4 | Chess piece AKA castle |
| 27 | 1 | RO | 6 | Ornamental decorative style |
| 31 | 1 | WA | 7 | Male practitioner of witchcraft; wizard; sorcerer (looks like a compound) |
| 30 | 1 | WA | 8 | Australian marsupial, smaller than kangaroo, bigger than wallaby (arguably a portmanteau) |
| 32 | 1 | WO | 4 | What you do for wages or a salary, verb/noun |
| 33 | 1 | WR | 5 | Cause the ruin of something, archaic verb (modern term has an E instead of A); or coarse brown seaweed, often with air bladders, noun |
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.