- Letters: C/AKLORW
- Words: 49
- Points: 186
- 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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| answers covered | answer's first two letters | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AL | 5 | Archaic exclamation of regret or dismay; from list word for “absence of” |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Musically, “with the bow,” or gas brand |
| 1 | CA | 5 | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 1 | CA | 4 | Phone, name, summon, or shout (out) |
| 1 | CA | 5 | Arum plant referred to as a lily |
| 1 | CA | 8 | Caribbean veg dish |
| 1 | CA | 6 | (Of a youth) inexperienced & immature; rhymes with “not deep” |
| 1 | CA | 5 | Actress Burnett with a variety show, or a Xmas song |
| 1 | CL | 5 | Heel sounds on tile, verb; or NPR “car” show guy 2 |
| 1 | CL | 4 | Lobster’s pinching “hand,” or animal’s sharp fingernail (gerund form is a pangram) |
| 1 | CL | 6 | Combo sex & waste cavity in non-mammals |
| 1 | CL | 5 | Sleeveless jacket, or espionage “… & dagger” term |
| 1 | CL | 5 | It tells time |
| 1 | CL | 9 | Machinery inside a mechanical device for telling time, compound |
| 1 | CO | 4 | “Dirty fuel” dug from mines; what Santa puts in your stocking if you’re bad |
| 1 | CO | 4 | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Rooster, or slang for penis |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Pepsi & RC dark brown soda flavor |
| 1 | CO | 6 | Cloth or leather strip a dog or cat wears around its neck |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Red, green, blue, purple, etc. |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Prep or heat food |
| 1 | CO | 4 | “Warm” antonym, or “neat!” |
| 1 | CO | 5 | Reef building marine invertebrates, a deep pink hue, or a sea off Australia |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Wine bottle stopper, originally made from the bark of certain trees, noun; or insert such a stopper, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | CO | 7 | Small Toyota sedan, or the inner ring of flower petals |
| 1 | CO | 6 | Animal pen, or “O.K. …” gunfight site |
| 1 | CO | 4 | Hood for a monk or superhero |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Slang for cocaine you smoke, or fracture line, noun + adj. |
| 1 | CR | 4 | Food storage & pre-digestion pouch in birds (stuck in my...) |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Move forward on the hands and knees, verb; or swimming stroke, noun |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Frog sound, or slang for “die” |
| 1 | CR | 4 | Holey shoe, or alligator relative abbr. |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Slow-cooking “pot”, usually earthenware, noun; or preserve in such a pot, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | CR | 5 | Lawbreaker, slang (Nixon: “I’m not a …”), or shepherd’s staff, noun; or bend something, especially a finger, verb, gerund form is a pangram |
| 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) |
| 1 | LA | 4 | Absence of (talent or imagination, e.g.), verb/noun |
| 1 | LO | 5 | From a nearby area, or a train making all stops |
| 1 | LO | 4 | A door fastener with a key, noun/verb |
| 1 | LO | 4 | Crazy, Spanish |
| 1 | OA | 7 | Metal gadget on a boat that holds the thing with which you row (compound) |
| 1 | OR | 4 | Killer “whale” |
| 1 | RA | 4 | Frame used to lock up bikes, set up billiards balls, organize spices, or dry dishes, e.g. |
| 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, gerund form is a pangram |
| 1 | RO | 6 | Ornamental decorative style from the late Baroque |
| 1 | WA | 4 | Inferior, slang (add a –Y & it means “humorously crazy”) |
| 1 | WA | 5 | Crazy, eccentric, or odd person, noun/adj. |
| 1 | WA | 7 | Male practitioner of witchcraft; wizard; sorcerer (looks like a compound) |
| 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 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