- Letters: O/ACDIMN
- Words: 58
- Points: 271
- 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 letter | answer's length | clue for root (answer may need prefix, suffix, tense change, alt spelling, ...) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A | 5 | Protein building block acid, or a NH₂ group, noun |
| 1 | A | 4 | A supply of bullets, slang abbreviation |
| 1 | A | 7 | Smelly cleaning fluid, NH₃ |
| 1 | A | 5 | Slang abbr. for a prenatal test that takes fluid from a uterus with a needle, noun |
| 1 | A | 8 | South American snake that can grow very large |
| 1 | A | 4 | Soon, poetically |
| 1 | A | 5 | Atom or molecule with a net electric charge |
| 1 | C | 5 | Bean source of Hershey Bars |
| 1 | C | 4 | Clothing that helps you hide, slang abbr. |
| 1 | C | 6 | Wheeled artillery |
| 2 | C | 5,7 | Nikon rival, or accepted (Church) lore, noun, adverb form is a pangram |
| 1 | C | 4 | “Hi” or “Bye” in Italian (“… bella”) |
| 1 | C | 8 | Aromatic spice made from the peeled, dried, and rolled bark of a Southeast Asian tree |
| 1 | C | 4 | 1st part of popular soda brand name |
| 1 | C | 5 | Spherical or nearly spherical bacterium |
| 1 | C | 5 | Hot winter drink with marshmallows, or the powder it’s made from |
| 1 | C | 6 | Nest for butterfly larva, noun; or wrap up like one, verb |
| 1 | C | 4 | Concluding event, remark, or section, especially in music |
| 1 | C | 5 | Sequence of 3 nucleotides in DNA |
| 1 | C | 4 | Metal $, noun; or come up with a new phrase, verb |
| 1 | C | 4 | Prolonged unconscious state |
| 1 | C | 5 | Paid jokester, or “… book” with superheroes |
| 1 | C | 5 | Curly punctuation mark that separates phrases |
| 1 | C | 7 | Give an order |
| 1 | C | 8 | Soldier specially trained to carry out raids |
| 1 | C | 6 | Ordinary, or shared (in …), adj. |
| 1 | C | 5 | Self-owned apartment with an HOA, slang abbr. |
| 1 | C | 6 | Penis wrapper that prevents pregnancy and STDs |
| 1 | C | 5 | Ice cream holder shape |
| 1 | D | 7 | Shape of a baseball field, or sparkly gem, noun |
| 1 | D | 4 | Flintstones pet, or T. Rex family abbr. |
| 1 | D | 4 | Extinct bird; or stupid person, slang |
| 1 | D | 6 | Area of territory owned or controlled by a ruler or government (eminent …), noun |
| 1 | D | 8 | Sovereign authority over a country or people (Canada was a … from 1867 to 1951) |
| 1 | D | 6 | Spotted game tile (“bones”) |
| 1 | D | 6 | Thingamajig, slang; ends in “father” nickname |
| 1 | D | 4 | Terrible fate (they fell to their …), or pioneering 1st person shooter game |
| 2 | I | 4,6 | Symbol (you tap on phone screen, e.g.), adverb form is a pangram |
| 1 | I | 5 | Slang phrase particular to a language (“raining cats & dogs”), noun |
| 1 | I | 5 | Atom or molecule with a net electric charge |
| 1 | M | 5 | ♀ parent, slang |
| 1 | M | 6 | Wealth that’s an evil influence, per the New Testament & Milton |
| 2 | M | 9,10 | Craze, noun (Beatle-…) |
| 1 | M | 6 | Underling, as seen in “Despicable Me” |
| 1 | M | 4 | Sound of pain or sexual pleasure (Harry Potter’s ghost “…ing Myrtle”) |
| 1 | M | 5 | Soul-like thing in Leibniz' metaphysics; or math (category theory)/computer functional programming term for a single entity (think 1st name of Leonardo’s smiling Lisa + 1st letter of his last name) |
| 1 | M | 5 | Slang for something huge or remarkable, or Italian for “world” (The Ramones' … Bizarro) |
| 1 | M | 4 | 1–channel sound abbreviation, or glandular fever “kissing disease” abbreviation |
| 1 | M | 4 | Emotional state (happy, angry, sad, etc.) |
| 1 | M | 4 | NASA Apollo missions landed on or circled it |
| 2 | N | 5,7 | Wanderer; or member of a people without a permanent home, who travel to find food, livestock pastures, or work, adj. form is a pangram |
| 1 | N | 6 | Military slang abbr. for a senior enlisted person (sgt., e.g.) expressed as a negation |
| 1 | N | 4 | 12:00, midday, 🕛 |
| 1 | O | 5 | Veg that makes you cry when cut (for some, this is the "dreaded root veg") |
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