XWordHint Crossword Answers Hints & Expert Solutions: July 10, 2025
Master today's NYT crossword with our expert hint system. We provide synonyms, antonyms, and strategic clues to help you solve without spoiling the fun. Perfect for crossword enthusiasts who want that satisfying "aha!" moment.
Today's Puzzle Difficulty: Tricky
💡 Pro Tip: Start with the fill-in-the-blank clues - they're usually the easiest entry points!
🔍 Across Clues - Strategic Hints (36 clues)
🧩 1A: "1. Major-league team known as the "North Siders," locally"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an awkward and inexperienced youth
- Similar words include: rookie, lad, sonny
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CUBS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2A: "5. I.R.S. fig."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SSN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3A: "8. Playbill bits"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BIOS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4A: "12. Heckelphone relative"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a slender double-reed instrument; a woodwind with a conical bore and a double-reed mouthpiece
- Similar words include: hautboy, hautbois
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OBOE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5A: "13. Urban housing option"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a farm building for housing poultry
- Similar words include: cage, henhouse, hencoop
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: COOP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6A: "15. Marie Claire competitor"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELLE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7A: "16. 1970 Van Morrison title track"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MOONDANCE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8A: "18. Barbershop choice"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a golf shot that curves to the right for a right-handed golfer
- Similar words include: evanesce, slice, fleet
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: FADE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9A: "19. A♠"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MASTERGARDENER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10A: "21. Part of the house in which Kevin is left behind in "Home Alone""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that floor consisting of open space at the top of a house just below roof; often used for storage
- Similar words include: bonce, dome, noodle
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ATTIC
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11A: "22. Fundamental precepts"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a fundamental principle or practice
- Similar words include: column, pillar, tower
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PILLARS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12A: "23. How some points end up"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a hypothetical case that law students argue as an exercise
- Similar words include: turn over, consider, disputable
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MOOT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13A: "26. Common fossil fuel"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a slippery or viscous liquid or liquefiable substance not miscible with water
- Similar words include: oil colour, rock oil, crude oil
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OIL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14A: "27. K♣"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: __________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TIGERWOODS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15A: "31. A/C meas."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a unit of heat equal to the amount of heat required to raise one pound of water one degree fahrenheit at one atmosphere pressure; equivalent to 251.997 calories
- Similar words include: British thermal unit, B.Th.U.
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BTU
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16A: "34. Yaki ___ (Japanese stir-fry)"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UDON
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17A: "35. Photographer Goldin"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that your grandmother
- Similar words include: nanna, naan, grannie
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NAN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18A: "36. Line of rulers ended by the 33-Down"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a male monarch or emperor (especially of russia prior to 1917)
- Similar words include: czar, tsar, tzar
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TSARS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19A: "38. Japanese lunch box"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BENTO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20A: "40. Canine command"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that be around, often idly or without specific purpose
- Similar words include: baby-sit, sit down, model
- Opposite of: stand, arise
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SIT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21A: "42. Chile's Nevado ___ Cruces National Park"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TRES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22A: "43. Ending with lemon or cannon"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a sweetened beverage of diluted fruit juice
- Similar words include: fruit drink
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ADE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23A: "44. Q♥"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that someone who arranges (or tries to arrange) marriages for others
- Similar words include: matcher, marriage broker
- Pattern: __________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MATCHMAKER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24A: "47. Bud"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a waterproof raincoat made of rubberized fabric
- Similar words include: mackintosh, macintosh, mack
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MAC
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25A: "48. Vape, informally"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ECIG
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26A: "49. Sparkling water additive"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the choicest or most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience
- Similar words include: nub, burden, meat
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ESSENCE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27A: "53. 40-40, say"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a tie in tennis or table tennis that requires winning two successive points to win the game
- Similar words include: devil, two, II
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DEUCE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28A: "57. J♦"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: JACKIEROBINSON
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29A: "60. 2025 Pixar film"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELIO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30A: "61. Big race that's no longer around?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that any of numerous extinct terrestrial reptiles of the mesozoic era
- Similar words include: dinosaur
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DINOSAURS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31A: "62. "Aw, jeez, you can't do that!""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CMON
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32A: "63. December has two big ones"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that (old testament) adam's wife in judeo-christian mythology: the first woman and mother of the human race; god created eve from adam's rib and placed adam and eve in the garden of eden
- Similar words include: eventide, even, eve
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EVES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33A: "64. N.B.A. star Ginóbili"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MANU
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 34A: "65. Sharp flavor"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a tart spicy quality
- Similar words include: Tang dynasty, Fucus serratus, Fucus vesiculosus
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TANG
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 35A: "66. C.I.A. predecessor"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a mouth or mouthlike opening
- Similar words include: operating system, Os, atomic number 76
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OSS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 36A: "67. It can follow anyone"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELSE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🔍 Down Clues - Strategic Hints (38 clues)
🧩 1D: "1. Curve that gives one pause?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a punctuation mark (,) used to indicate the separation of elements within the grammatical structure of a sentence
- Similar words include: comma butterfly, Polygonia comma
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: COMMA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2D: "2. German war vessel"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UBOAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3D: "3. What a stepstool provides"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the act of giving hope or support to someone
- Similar words include: encourage, promote, hike
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BOOST
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4D: "4. Mood"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that tender, romantic, or nostalgic feeling or emotion
- Similar words include: thought, view, persuasion
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SENTIMENT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5D: "5. Reminder of a past fight, maybe"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a mark left (usually on the skin) by the healing of injured tissue
- Similar words include: scratch, mark, scrape
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SCAR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6D: "6. Karaoke choice"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a short musical composition with words
- Similar words include: strain, Song dynasty, birdcall
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SONG
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7D: "7. For real, to Gen Z"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NOCAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8D: "8. Happened to"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that become of; happen to
- Similar words include: betide, happen, bechance
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BEFELL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9D: "9. Glazer of "Broad City""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ILANA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10D: "10. Like Stonehenge vis-à-vis the Parthenon"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that advanced in years; (`aged' is pronounced as two syllables)
- Similar words include: aged, one-time, Old
- Opposite of: new, young
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OLDER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11D: "11. Sibyls"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a person with unusual powers of foresight
- Similar words include: illusionist, seer, prophet
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SEERS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12D: "14. "End of story!""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an amount of time
- Similar words include: time period, menstruum, menses
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PERIOD
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13D: "17. Part of a restaurant's ambience"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that decoration consisting of the layout and furnishings of a livable interior
- Similar words include: interior decoration
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DECOR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14D: "20. "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the ___" (Bravo show)"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DLIST
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15D: "24. Possess"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that have ownership or possession of
- Similar words include: possess, ain, have
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OWN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16D: "25. A best man may make one"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that slices of bread that have been toasted
- Similar words include: crispen, pledge, drink
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TOAST
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17D: "27. Part of a brass band"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the lowest brass wind instrument
- Similar words include: sousaphone, bass horn
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TUBA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18D: "28. Checked like a bouncer, for short"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: IDED
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19D: "29. Blotto"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that change location; move, travel, or proceed, also metaphorically
- Similar words include: at rest, function, fit
- Opposite of: stop, malfunction
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: GONE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20D: "30. Not straight up, in a way"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ONICE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21D: "31. Give orders loudly and curtly"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that tough protective covering of the woody stems and roots of trees and other woody plants
- Similar words include: skin, barque
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BARK
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22D: "32. Corner"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a tall perennial woody plant having a main trunk and branches forming a distinct elevated crown; includes both gymnosperms and angiosperms
- Similar words include: shoetree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, corner
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TREE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23D: "33. See 36-Across"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a former communist country in eastern europe and northern asia; established in 1922; included russia and 14 other soviet socialist republics (ukraine and byelorussia and others); officially dissolved 31 december 1991
- Similar words include: Russia, Soviet Union, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: USSR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24D: "37. Nicki Minaj or Iggy Pop, e.g."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: STAGENAME
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25D: "39. Neighbor of an Emirati"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a native or inhabitant of oman
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OMANI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26D: "41. Active ingredient in some gummies"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that psychoactive substance present in marijuana
- Similar words include: tetrahydrocannabinol
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: THC
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27D: "45. Submit"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that yield to another's wish or opinion
- Similar words include: assent, give in, enter
- Opposite of: dissent
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ACCEDE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28D: "46. Certain skirts"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the southern part of france
- Similar words include: MIDI, musical instrument digital interface, Midi
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MIDIS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29D: "47. River through six Asian countries"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an asian river; flows through a large delta in southern vietnam into the south china sea
- Similar words include: Mekong River
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MEKONG
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30D: "49. Throw out"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that put out or expel from a place
- Similar words include: discharge, chuck out, expel
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EJECT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31D: "50. Actress Hayek"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SALMA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32D: "51. Notable descendant"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a descendent or heir
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SCION
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33D: "52. Cynthia of "Wicked""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ERIVO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 34D: "54. Standard"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that occurring or encountered or experienced or observed frequently or in accordance with regular practice or procedure
- Similar words include: common
- Opposite of: unusual
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: USUAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 35D: "55. Podiatric maladies"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that tall annual cereal grass bearing kernels on large ears: widely cultivated in america in many varieties; the principal cereal in mexico and central and south america since pre-columbian times
- Similar words include: edible corn, corn whiskey, Indian corn
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CORNS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 36D: "56. Follow"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that issue or terminate (in a specified way, state, etc.); end
- Similar words include: result
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ENSUE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 37D: "58. Rare golf scores"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the smallest whole number or a numeral representing this number
- Similar words include: 1, one, I
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ONES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 38D: "59. Freelancer's lack"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a person who exercises control over workers
- Similar words include: knob, foreman, gaffer
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BOSS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧠 Expert Solving Strategies
🎯 Start Smart
Begin with fill-in-the-blank clues and short 3-4 letter words. These are your foundation.
❓ Decode the Clues
Question marks indicate wordplay or puns. "Maybe" suggests multiple interpretations.
🔤 Use Cross-References
Let intersecting letters guide you. One correct answer unlocks several others.
📚 Build Vocabulary
Common crossword words repeat. Learning them speeds up future solving.
📊 Today's Puzzle Stats
36 Across Clues
38 Down Clues
74 Total Clues
🗂️ More NYT Crossword Help
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