- Letters: A/HORTWY
- Words: 60
- Points: 266
- 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 | AH | 4 | Nautical greeting (“… there, matey!”) |
| 1 | AO | 5 | Main blood pipe from heart |
| 1 | AR | 5 | Buddhist who has achieved nirvana; ends in “cap” synonym |
| 1 | AR | 5 | Ordered series, esp. math |
| 1 | AR | 5 | What you shoot with a bow |
| 1 | AR | 9 | West Indian plant that produces starch |
| 1 | AR | 6 | Steep-sided gully in SW US; Spanish for creek |
| 1 | AR | 4 | Creative activity: painting, music, literature, dance, etc |
| 1 | AT | 5 | Flower oil for perfume |
| 1 | AT | 7 | Prevent from accomplishing something |
| 1 | AW | 4 | Elsewhere, or stored (put), adv.; or a sports team game not played at home, adj. |
| 1 | AW | 4 | Not as expected (his plans went …), adj. |
| 1 | HA | 6 | Farm implement consisting of a heavy frame with teeth that is dragged over plowed land to break up clods, remove weeds, and cover seed, noun; or cause distress, verb (usually in gerund form) |
| 1 | HA | 5 | UK ginger prince wed to Meghan |
| 1 | HA | 4 | ♂ deer, not ♥ |
| 1 | HA | 4 | Archaic 3rd person singular present form of "possess" (Hell … no fury) |
| 1 | HA | 5 | Yoga type that pairs poses with breathing |
| 2 | HO | 4,5 | Crystallized frost |
| 1 | HO | 6 | US Marine cheer word, each syllable pronounced separately |
| 1 | HO | 6 | Cheer word (hip hip …) |
| 1 | HO | 4 | Jewish circle dance (“The …”) |
| 1 | HO | 9 | Person or thing that strongly encourages an action (usually starts with EX–); obscure adj. |
| 1 | OA | 4 | Grain that is Quaker's specialty |
| 1 | OA | 4 | Vow or pledge (you’re under one in court testimony) |
| 2 | OR | 6,7 | Make a speech |
| 1 | RA | 5 | Sewer-dwelling rodent |
| 1 | RA | 7 | Machine gun sound |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Lion “shout” |
| 1 | RO | 6 | Phone with dial, adj., or int’l service org (… Club) |
| 2 | RO | 7,8 | Move in a circle around an axis or center |
| 1 | TA | 5 | Dark, thick, flammable liquid distilled from wood or coal |
| 1 | TA | 4 | Asian veg that sounds like fortunetelling cards |
| 1 | TA | 5 | Fortunetelling cards |
| 1 | TA | 4 | Open filled pastry, noun; or sharp taste, adj. |
| 1 | TA | 6 | Fish sauce, or tooth buildup |
| 1 | TA | 6 | Skin “ink” |
| 1 | TA | 5 | Worn & shabby, or of poor quality; Scottish |
| 1 | TH | 4 | Pronoun for the other thing (this & …) |
| 1 | TH | 8 | In a certain direction (he went …) |
| 1 | TH | 4 | Unfreeze, with “out” |
| 2 | TH | 6,7 | Front of neck, “Deep …” Watergate source |
| 1 | TH | 9 | Meant to be discarded, adj/noun, compound pangram |
| 1 | TH | 6 | Prevent from accomplishing something |
| 1 | TO | 5 | 1st 5 books of Bible in scroll form for Jews |
| 1 | TR | 4 | Use it to carry drinks |
| 1 | WA | 5 | North American burning bush, or red-faced Native American mascot used by the Cleveland baseball team when they were the "Indians" (Chief …) |
| 2 | WA | 4,5 | Small, hard benign skin growth (on a witch’s chin?) (…-hog, plantar …) |
| 1 | WA | 4 | Cautious |
| 1 | WA | 4 | Unit of electric power |
| 1 | WH | 4 | Interrogative akin to “Pardon? Say again?” |
| 1 | WH | 4 | Command to a horse to make it stop or slow down |
| 1 | WO | 9 | Someone who is always anxious (slang, compound) |
| 1 | WR | 5 | Anger, literary |
| 1 | YA | 5 | Exclamation ("I’m rich!"), or Web portal & search engine before Google! |
| 1 | YA | 6 | Old man's pepper (also Peter of Peter, Paul, and Mary) |
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