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 lover who want that satisfying "aha!" moment.
Today is Puzzle Difficulty: Moderate
💡 Pro Tip: Start with the fill-in-the-blank clues - they're usually the easiest entry points!
🔍 Across Clues - Strategic Hints (35 clues)
🧩 1A: "1. Speeding check"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a lump on the body caused by a blow
- Similar words include: gibbousness, excrescence, dislodge
- Opposite of: promote
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BUMP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2A: "5. Vocally"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that using the voice; not silently
- Similar words include: loudly, loud, out loud
- Opposite of: softly
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ALOUD
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3A: "10. Source for some bubbly"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ASTI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4A: "14. Where the the Magi journeyed from"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that (old-fashioned) at or from or to a great distance; far
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AFAR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5A: "15. "Over my dead body!""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: GODNO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6A: "16. One may be in default"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the temporary provision of money (usually at interest)
- Similar words include: loanword, lend
- Opposite of: borrow
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LOAN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7A: "17. Mixtures in copier cartridges"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: __________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TOPEARNERS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8A: "19. Target of an exfoliator"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that any tiny hole admitting passage of a liquid (fluid or gas)
- Similar words include: rivet, stoma, concentrate
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PORE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9A: "20. Birthplace of Madeleine Albright and Vaclav Havel"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the capital and largest city of the czech republic in the western part of the country; a cultural and commercial center since the 14th century
- Similar words include: Prag, Praha, Czech capital
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PRAGUE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10A: "21. Drink made with an artisanal flourish, maybe"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that strong espresso coffee with a topping of frothed steamed milk
- Similar words include: caffe latte
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LATTE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11A: "22. Begins dealing with"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HASAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12A: "25. Chatted online, in brief"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that challenge the honesty or veracity of
- Similar words include: criminate, incriminate, accuse
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: IMPEACHED
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13A: "27. Risk-___"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that (usually followed by `to') strongly opposed
- Similar words include: loath, indisposed, antipathetic
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AVERSE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14A: "29. Sporting great who said "Tennis uses the language of life""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AGASSI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15A: "30. School that's a rival of 37-Down"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a university in connecticut
- Similar words include: Elihu Yale, Yale University
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: YALE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16A: "31. P.R. piece?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PUERTO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17A: "35. Stat used to calculate a QB's passer rating"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ATT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18A: "36. In vain ... or how to read the answers to 17-, 25-, 49- and 58-Across"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that in an unproductive manner
- Similar words include: unprofitably, unproductively
- Opposite of: profitably, productively
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: FRUITLESSLY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19A: "39. Org. that monitors on-air obscenity"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an independent government agency that regulates interstate and international communications by radio and television and wire and cable and satellite
- Similar words include: Federal Communications Commission
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: FCC
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20A: "41. Matter in a neon sign"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the colorless watery fluid of the blood and lymph that contains no cells, but in which the blood cells (erythrocytes, leukocytes, and thrombocytes) are suspended
- Similar words include: blood plasma, plasm
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PLASMA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21A: "42. Subjects of some European fishing bans"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the fatty flesh of eel; an elongate fish found in fresh water in europe and america; large eels are usually smoked or pickled
- Similar words include: eel
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EELS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22A: "45. Start of a lovelorn soliloquy"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OROMEO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23A: "47. Bridges in Baghdad cross it"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an asian river; a tributary of the euphrates river
- Similar words include: Tigris River
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TIGRIS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24A: "49. Some fishing gear"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ROMANGODS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25A: "53. Level in a social hierarchy"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that social status or position conferred by a system based on class
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CASTE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26A: "54. Street urchin"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that (sometimes offensive) a homeless boy who has been abandoned and roams the streets
- Similar words include: throwaway, street arab
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: GAMIN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27A: "55. Less merry"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a tool used by an engraver
- Similar words include: weighty, grievous, grave
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: GRAVER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28A: "57. Abbr. standing in for co-authors"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ETAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29A: "58. Investigate in detail"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: __________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PROBLEMONE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30A: "62. Pitchfork point"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that prong on a fork or pitchfork or antler
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TINE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31A: "63. Rivian competitor"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a unit of magnetic flux density equal to one weber per square meter
- Similar words include: Nikola Tesla
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TESLA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32A: "64. Gemstone found in hot springs"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a translucent mineral consisting of hydrated silica of variable color; some varieties are used as gemstones
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OPAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33A: "65. Org. promoting sober motoring"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SADD
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 34A: "66. Half-___ (desultory)"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ASSED
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 35A: "67. Winter sports venue"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that building that contains a surface for ice skating or roller skating
- Similar words include: skating rink
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: RINK
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🔍 Down Clues - Strategic Hints (39 clues)
🧩 1D: "1. Be up"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that nocturnal mouselike mammal with forelimbs modified to form membranous wings and anatomical adaptations for echolocation by which they navigate
- Similar words include: lick, drub, chiropteran
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2D: "2. What arrives in the film "Arrival""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an (apparently) flying object whose nature is unknown; especially those considered to have extraterrestrial origins
- Similar words include: flying saucer, unidentified flying object
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UFO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3D: "3. Dash display in some cars"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a diagrammatic representation of the earth's surface (or part of it)
- Similar words include: function, single-valued function, map out
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4D: "4. Tax ___"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PREPARER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5D: "5. Tourist destination outside of Delhi"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a city in northern india; former capital of the mogul empire; site of the taj mahal
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AGRA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6D: "6. Nighttime sound?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LONGI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7D: "7. Classical performance space"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ODEUM
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8D: "8. One with diplomatic plates in N.Y.C."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UNREP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9D: "9. "Mesa para ___" (request at a Spanish restaurant)"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the federal department in the united states that sets and maintains foreign policies
- Similar words include: exercise, State, State Department
- Opposite of: unmake
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DOS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10D: "10. Wool source"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that wool of the alpaca
- Similar words include: Lama pacos
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ALPACA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11D: "11. Futures experts?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that someone who makes predictions of the future (usually on the basis of special knowledge)
- Similar words include: predictor, forecaster, prognosticator
- Pattern: ___________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SOOTHSAYERS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12D: "12. Most pucker-inducing"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that tasting sour like a lemon
- Similar words include: tangy, sharp, lemonlike
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TARTEST
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13D: "13. "Gimme!""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: INEEDIT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14D: "18. Culture vulture's concerns"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills)
- Similar words include: artistry, artistic creation, art
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ARTS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15D: "21. Financial center of West Africa"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that chief port and economic center of nigeria; located in southwestern nigeria on the gulf of guinea; former capital of nigeria
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LAGOS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16D: "22. Kind of "fever" that's not actually a fever, and is typically caused by pollen"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that grass mowed and cured for use as fodder
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HAY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17D: "23. Director DuVernay"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AVA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18D: "24. It's needed to stay calm"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SELFCOMMAND
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19D: "26. Rankles no end"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EATSAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20D: "28. Prose postscript"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a short speech (often in verse) addressed directly to the audience by an actor at the end of a play
- Similar words include: epilogue
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EPILOG
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21D: "32. ___ Hagen, Tony-winning actress and theater practitioner"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a reptile genus of iguanidae
- Similar words include: genus Uta
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UTA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22D: "33. Trains for the Chicago White Sox?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that angular distance above the horizon (especially of a celestial object)
- Similar words include: ALT, EL, altitude
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23D: "34. Dreamily named rock group?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a recurring sleep state during which dreaming occurs; a state of rapidly shifting eye movements during sleep
- Similar words include: rapid eye movement sleep, paradoxical sleep, rapid eye movement
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: REM
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24D: "37. School that's a rival of 30-Across, informally"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UPENN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25D: "38. Part of a jouster's protection"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LEGARMOR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26D: "39. Thinks nothing of"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that dismiss from the mind; stop remembering
- Similar words include: blank out, draw a blank, leave
- Opposite of: mind, remember
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: FORGETS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27D: "40. European land where much of "Game of Thrones" was filmed"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a republic in the western balkans in south-central europe in the eastern adriatic coastal area; formerly part of the habsburg monarchy and yugoslavia; became independent in 1991
- Similar words include: Republic of Croatia, Hrvatska
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CROATIA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28D: "43. On fire"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the humanistic study of a body of literature
- Similar words include: illume, dismount, lighted
- Opposite of: extinguish, unlighted
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LIT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29D: "44. Seattle-to-Mount Rainier dir."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the compass point midway between south and southeast
- Similar words include: south southeast, sou'-sou'-east
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SSE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30D: "46. On its way, in a way"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that send via the postal service
- Similar words include: send, post, get off
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MAILED
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31D: "48. Drink that might turn your tongue blue"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ICEE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32D: "50. Fiends of folklore"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a cruel wicked and inhuman person
- Similar words include: demon, fiend, monster
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OGRES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33D: "51. Useless leftovers"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that worthless or dangerous material that should be removed
- Similar words include: impurity, slag, scoria
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DROSS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 34D: "52. Fur once favored by Russian royalty"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an artist's brush made of sable hairs
- Similar words include: soot black, sable's hair pencil, coal black
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SABLE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 35D: "56. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Guerrero, to fans"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: VLAD
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 36D: "58. Org. that might sponsor a read-a-thon, in brief"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PTA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 37D: "59. Mani-pedi brand"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OPI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 38D: "60. Grammy, in the U.K."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that your grandmother
- Similar words include: Nan River, gran, nanna
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NAN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 39D: "61. Creature on the state flags of Michigan and Idaho"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that large northern deer with enormous flattened antlers in the male; called `elk' in europe and `moose' in north america
- Similar words include: Alces alces, European elk, American elk
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELK
💡 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
35 Across Clues
39 Down Clues
74 Total Clues
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