NYT Spelling Bee Hints & Analysis

Tap or hover over a word to see its definition.

• aback by surprise
• aboard on first or second or third base
• abracadabra gibberish and nonsense
• abroad in a foreign country
• accord allow to have
• adobo a dish of marinated vegetables and meat or fish; served with rice
• arbor tree (as opposed to shrub)
• arco (of instruments in the violin family) to be played with the bow
• ardor feelings of great warmth and intensity
• baba a small cake leavened with yeast
• babka a coffee cake flavored with orange rind and raisins and almonds
• back located at or near the back of an animal
• backboard a board used to support the back of someone or something
• backdoor an undocumented way to get access to a computer system or the data it contains
• baobab African tree having an exceedingly thick trunk and fruit that resembles a gourd and has an edible pulp called monkey bread
• barb provide with barbs
• barback
• barbacoa
• bard put a caparison on
• bark remove the bark of a tree
• barrack lodge in barracks
• boar an uncastrated male hog
• board get on board of (trains, buses, ships, aircraft, etc.)
• boba
• bookrack
• brad fasten with brads
• broad showing or characterized by broad-mindedness
• cacao tropical American tree producing cacao beans
• carb
• card separate the fibers of
• cardboard without substance
• carob evergreen Mediterranean tree with edible pods; the biblical carob
• cobra venomous Asiatic and African elapid snakes that can expand the skin of the neck into a hood
• coca a South American shrub whose leaves are chewed by natives of the Andes; a source of cocaine
• cocoa powder of ground roasted cacao beans with most of the fat removed
• coda the closing section of a musical composition
• corkboard a heat-insulating building material consisting of cork granules that are made into sheets by compressing and baking
• crab scurry sideways like a crab
• crack of the highest quality
• croak make complaining remarks or noises under one's breath
• dark not giving performances; closed
• doodad something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known
• dorado
• drab causing dejection
• kabob cubes of meat marinated and cooked on a skewer usually with vegetables
• okra tall coarse annual of Old World tropics widely cultivated in southern United States and West Indies for its long mucilaginous green pods used as basis for soups and stews; sometimes placed in genus Hibiscus
• orca predatory black-and-white toothed whale with large dorsal fin; common in cold seas
• rack put on a rack and pinion
• radar measuring instrument in which the echo of a pulse of microwave radiation is used to detect and locate distant objects
• road an open way (generally public) for travel or transportation
• roar laugh unrestrainedly and heartily