- Letters: O/BEILMZ
- Words: 37
- Points: 126
- 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.
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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| answers covered | answer's first two letters | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BI | 5 | Large community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat, for example forest or tundra |
| 1 | BL | 4 | Gelatinous mass, or 1950s alien horror film |
| 1 | BL | 5 | (Of a plant) produce flowers |
| 1 | BO | 6 | Type of “head” doll that nods when moved |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Heat water to 212°F or 100°C |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Cotton seed target for weevil |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Western string tie |
| 1 | BO | 4 | It explodes, noun/verb |
| 1 | BO | 5 | Frozen dome-shaped dessert |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Breast, slang |
| 1 | BO | 6 | “Owie” you kiss & make better, mistake, or what 2 ghosts say |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Sound of explosion or subwoofer |
| 1 | BO | 5 | Alcohol, especially hard liquor |
| 1 | BO | 4 | Stupid, rude, or insignificant person, especially a man (originally, name of a famous clown) |
| 2 | IM | 8,10 | Able to move freely or easily, adjective/noun |
| 1 | LI | 5 | Uncertain waiting period (in …), a place for a soul not in either Heaven or Hell, or a dance where you bend backwards to pass under a bar |
| 1 | LI | 4 | Chauffeured, stretched car, slang abbr. |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Brain section, or part of ear most commonly pierced |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Wolf, Spanish |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Hang out or droop, as a dog’s tongue |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Cloth weaving device |
| 1 | ME | 4 | Office note abbr. |
| 1 | ME | 5 | Voice between soprano and alto |
| 1 | MI | 5 | Old stencil duplicator, abbr. (missing –graph suffix) |
| 2 | MO | 6,8 | Able to move freely or easily, adjective/noun |
| 1 | MO | 4 | To work hard (archaic); homophone of bris snipper |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Burrowing blind rodent, or embedded spy |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Mobster’s ♀ |
| 1 | OB | 4 | Double reed orchestra-tuning instrument |
| 1 | OL | 4 | Margarine |
| 1 | OL | 4 | Mixture, or spicy Spanish stew, NOT margarine |
| 1 | OL | 5 | Skateboard jump, or Stan’s slapstick partner |
| 1 | OO | 4 | Slowly trickle or seep out, verb/noun |
| 1 | ZO | 6 | Walking corpse, or a mixed drink with several kinds of rum or liqueur |
| 1 | ZO | 4 | travel quickly, or change between close-up and long shot, or a popular video conferencing platform |
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 Twitter.
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