- Letters: O/MNPRTY
- Words: 56
- Points: 188
- 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 | MO | 5 | Mother, familiar |
| 1 | MO | 4 | 1–channel sound abbreviation, or glandular fever “kissing disease” abbreviation |
| 1 | MO | 7 | Singular tag for famous people (Cher, Moses, Socrates, Beyoncé) |
| 1 | MO | 8 | Sound that is unchanging in pitch (“She spoke in a … that put me to sleep”) |
| 2 | MO | 4,5 | NASA Apollo missions landed on or circled it |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Othello (“The …”), noun; or tract of open uncultivated upland (British noun); or tie up a boat, verb |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Irrelevant, in law (it’s a … point), adj.; or obscure verb meaning to raise a topic for discussion |
| 1 | MO | 4 | Poetic start of day, NOT lament the dead; + period before midday |
| 1 | MO | 5 | Idiot |
| 1 | MO | 5 | Device (electric or gasoline) that produces movement (in a car, e.g.) |
| 1 | MO | 5 | Short phrase encapsulating beliefs of an institution (Marines’ “Semper Fi”) |
| 1 | NO | 4 | 12:00, midday, 🕛 |
| 1 | NO | 4 | Standard (noun), or former SNL Weekend Update comic Macdonald |
| 1 | ON | 4 | Preposition when mounting an animal or boarding a large vehicle |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Ceremonial public display (Elgar’s “… & Circumstance March” at graduations) |
| 1 | PO | 6 | Cheerleader accessory |
| 1 | PO | 7 | Temp floating bridge; or cylinder full of air, two of which keep a type of slow boat afloat |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Yankee Doodle went riding into town on this small horse breed |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Tire out (I’m …ed); or defecate, slang verb/noun |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Lacking $, or worse than ideal |
| 1 | PO | 5 | Flower used to make opium or honor veterans |
| 2 | PO | 4,5 | Smutty images |
| 1 | PO | 4 | Nautical “left,” harbor, or wine from Lisbon |
| 1 | PO | 5 | Kid’s toilet |
| 1 | PR | 4 | Formal dance held in springtime |
| 1 | PR | 5 | A piece of publicity or advertising, especially in the form of a short film or video |
| 1 | PR | 10 | Raised mass of land that juts into a lowland or body of water, pangram |
| 1 | PR | 6 | Done without delay, adj.; or assist or encourage a hesitating speaker, verb/noun; or text output by a computer to indicate what input it needs, noun/verb |
| 1 | PR | 6 | Quickly, or Spanish for “soon” |
| 1 | PR | 4 | Support (… up), verb; on-stage object or ballot initiative abbr., noun |
| 1 | PR | 6 | Subatomic particle with positive charge |
| 1 | PY | 4 | “…-maniac” who likes to start fires, slang abbr. |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Play roughly and energetically, verb/noun |
| 2 | RO | 4,5 | Chamber of a house (kitchen, bed…, bath…), noun/verb |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Plant anchor that sucks up water |
| 1 | RO | 4 | Strong cord made by twisting together strands of fibers, noun/verb |
| 1 | RO | 5 | Device or blade that spins |
| 1 | TO | 8 | Absolute nonsense (dated) |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Broadway award, or Maj. Nelson on "Jeannie" |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Animated film or character, slang abbr. (car…) |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Short horn sound; noun/verb |
| 2 | TO | 7,8 | Technical term for “what a place is called” (for example, Rome, Ohio, Iraq), from Greek |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Ripped, adj. or past participle |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Bull, Spanish |
| 1 | TO | 6 | Lethargy, not quite hibernation |
| 1 | TO | 4 | Legal wrong, NOT pastry |
| 1 | TR | 5 | Walk heavily/trudge, slang |
| 1 | TR | 5 | Soldiers (usually plural), or unit of Boy or Girl Scouts |
| 1 | TR | 4 | Fast walking pace for horses or people |
| 1 | TR | 4 | Helen of “The Iliad” home, or oz. for gold & gems |
| 1 | TY | 4 | Keybord eror, slang |
| 1 | TY | 4 | Newbie, from Latin “recruit” |
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