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: 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. Cursed look"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EVILEYE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2A: "8. Kia sedan renamed the K5 in 2020"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that most favorable conditions or greatest degree or amount possible under given circumstances
- Similar words include: optimum
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OPTIMA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3A: "14. Typically the biggest players on a football team"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the football players who line up on the line of scrimmage
- Similar words include: lineman, linesman, electrician
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LINEMEN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4A: "15. Major arteries"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the large trunk artery that carries blood from the left ventricle of the heart to branch arteries
- Similar words include: aorta
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AORTAS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5A: "16. Convertible living room pieces"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SOFABEDS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6A: "18. Dances to a Chubby Checker song, say"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an unforeseen development
- Similar words include: winding, sophisticate, writhe
- Opposite of: untwist, unbend
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TWISTS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7A: "19. "You ready to do this?""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ALLSET
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8A: "20. Display container"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an occurrence of something
- Similar words include: example, guinea pig, subject
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CASE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9A: "22. Bit of gear for an entomologist"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a computer network consisting of a worldwide network of computer networks that use the tcp/ip network protocols to facilitate data transmission and exchange
- Similar words include: web, cyberspace, lucre
- Opposite of: gross
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NET
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10A: "23. ___ Lingus"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11A: "24. "Please turn up the thermostat!""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BRR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12A: "25. City at the center of "Moonraker," informally"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the former capital and 2nd largest city of brazil; chief brazilian port; famous as a tourist attraction
- Similar words include: Rio de Janeiro
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: RIO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13A: "27. Winners of Super Bowl III (and no other Super Bowls since then)"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an airplane powered by one or more jet engines
- Similar words include: special K, super C, reverse lightning
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: JETS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14A: "29. Paired number"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that two items of the same kind
- Similar words include: duette, twain, couple
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DUET
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15A: "30. Tally mark"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a v-shaped indentation
- Similar words include: mountain pass, nick, snick
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NOTCH
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16A: "33. Team ___"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that north american republic containing 50 states - 48 conterminous states in north america plus alaska in northwest north america and the hawaiian islands in the pacific ocean; achieved independence in 1776
- Similar words include: the States, US, Army
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: USA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17A: "34. It may be struck for a camera"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that affected manners intended to impress others
- Similar words include: posture, personate, vex
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: POSE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18A: "35. Part of the Disney logo"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a large and stately mansion
- Similar words include: palace, rook, castling
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CASTLE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19A: "36. Gently touches"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DABSAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20A: "38. ___ tide"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a less than average tide occurring at the first and third quarters of the moon
- Similar words include: neap tide
- Opposite of: springtide
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NEAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21A: "40. Green eggs go-with"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that meat cut from the thigh of a hog (usually smoked)
- Similar words include: gammon, overact, jambon
- Opposite of: underact
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HAM
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22A: "41. Lubricate"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OILUP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23A: "42. Provide backup for, as a weightlifter or gymnast"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a point located with respect to surface features of some region
- Similar words include: smear, smudge, pick out
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SPOT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24A: "43. Suckers"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a watery solution of sugars, salts, and minerals that circulates through the vascular system of a plant
- Similar words include: muggins, blackjack, saphead
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SAPS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25A: "44. December 31, notably"
🎯 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: evening, even, eventide
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EVE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26A: "45. Chewie's "Star Wars" buddy"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that imperial dynasty that ruled china (most of the time from 206 bc to ad 220) and expanded its boundaries and developed its bureaucracy; remembered as one of the great eras of chinese civilization
- Similar words include: Han dynasty
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HAN
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27A: "46. One of just two original Monopoly tokens still made today"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that headdress that protects the head from bad weather; has shaped crown and usually a brim
- Similar words include: lid, chapeau
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28A: "47. "When I ___, you ___, we ___" (lyric from a Freak Nasty hit)"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a depression in an otherwise level surface
- Similar words include: magnetic inclination, douse, drop
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DIP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29A: "49. Some whiskeys"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the seed of the cereal grass
- Similar words include: rye whisky, Secale cereale, rye
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: RYES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30A: "51. Stopped bringing up"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LETDIE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31A: "54. Beethoven's Third"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EROICA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32A: "56. Most terrifying"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that provoking fear terror
- Similar words include: shivery, scary, chilling
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SCARIEST
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33A: "58. Find in the dictionary"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an operation that determines whether one or more of a set of items has a specified property
- Similar words include: search
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LOOKUP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 34A: "59. Lose one's shirt, say"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that partial or complete nakedness
- Similar words include: discase, peel, disrobe
- Opposite of: dress
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: UNDRESS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 35A: "60. Fjords and firths"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an arm off of a larger body of water (often between rocky headlands)
- Similar words include: inlet, intake, recess
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: INLETS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 36A: "61. Regular fixed compensation"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BASEPAY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🔍 Down Clues - Strategic Hints (37 clues)
🧩 1D: "1. "Frozen" queen"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELSA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2D: "2. Six-stringed instrument similar to a cello"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that any of a family of bowed stringed instruments that preceded the violin family
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: VIOL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3D: "3. Item that has to be blown up before being filled with water"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: INFLATABLEPOOL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4D: "4. Occupancy agreements"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that property that is leased or rented out or let
- Similar words include: let, letting, charter
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LEASES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5D: "5. Smoldering remnant"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a hot fragment of wood or coal that is left from a fire and is glowing or smoldering
- Similar words include: coal
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EMBER
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6D: "6. Hurl, in modern lingo"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: YEET
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7D: "7. Conclude"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that either extremity of something that has length
- Similar words include: terminate, stop, death
- Opposite of: begin, beginning
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: END
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8D: "8. Quaker ___"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that annual grass of europe and north africa; grains used as food and fodder (referred to primarily in the plural: `oats')
- Similar words include: oat
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OATS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9D: "9. Rejuvenating break"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: POWERNAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10D: "10. Lead-in to -umvirate"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TRI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11D: "11. "You're overthinking this" ... or what might be said about 3-, 9-, 17- and 34-Down?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ______________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ITSNOTTHATDEEP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12D: "12. Fellow Down Under"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the officer below the master on a commercial ship
- Similar words include: match, fellow, Paraguay tea
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MATE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13D: "13. No. 2: Abbr."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ASST
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14D: "17. Quick throw in football"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: __________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SCREENPASS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15D: "21. Class that may not have written tests"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the products of human creativity; works of art collectively
- Similar words include: prowess, fine art, artwork
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ART
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16D: "24. Peter Pan transport"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a vehicle carrying many passengers; used for public transport
- Similar words include: motorbus, autobus, charabanc
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BUS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17D: "26. Apple mobile platform"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that (greek mythology) a maiden seduced by zeus; when hera was about to discover them together zeus turned her into a white heifer
- Similar words include: Io
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: IOS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18D: "27. Japanese martial art"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a sport adapted from jujitsu (using principles of not resisting) and similar to wrestling; developed in japan
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: JUDO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19D: "28. Actor Morales of "Ozark""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ESAI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20D: "29. It separates the dollars and cents"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a very small circular shape
- Similar words include: disperse, Elvis, stud
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DOT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21D: "31. Applaud"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a sudden very loud noise
- Similar words include: applaud, gonorrhoea, blast
- Opposite of: boo
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CLAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22D: "32. Tailor's edges"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the edge of a piece of cloth; especially the finished edge that has been doubled under and stitched down
- Similar words include: ahem, hem
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HEMS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23D: "34. Minor office injury"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PAPERCUT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24D: "35. Animal on a "Hang in there!" inspirational poster"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that feline mammal usually having thick soft fur and no ability to roar: domestic cats; wildcats
- Similar words include: cat-o'-nine-tails, African tea, barf
- Opposite of: keep down
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CAT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25D: "37. Tahoe or Cherokee, in brief"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a high-performance four-wheel drive car built on a truck chassis
- Similar words include: S.U.V., sport utility, sport utility vehicle
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SUV
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26D: "39. Proterozoic, for one"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the longest division of geological time
- Similar words include: aeon
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EON
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27D: "42. That woman"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SHE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28D: "43. Biting piece"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that witty language used to convey insults or scorn; ; ; --jonathan swift
- Similar words include: caustic remark, irony, sarcasm
- Pattern: ______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SATIRE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29D: "46. Cowboys' charges"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a group of cattle or sheep or other domestic mammals all of the same kind that are herded by humans
- Similar words include: herd, crowd, ruck
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HERDS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30D: "47. Sub location"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a shop selling ready-to-eat food products
- Similar words include: food shop, delicatessen
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DELI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31D: "48. Original Monopoly token discontinued in 2013"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a heavy ductile magnetic metallic element; is silver-white in pure form but readily rusts; used in construction and tools and armament; plays a role in the transport of oxygen by the blood
- Similar words include: iron out, Fe, cast-iron
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: IRON
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32D: "50. Goes on and on and on"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that informal terms for the mouth
- Similar words include: gob, yip, yelp
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: YAPS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33D: "51. Singer Del Rey"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LANA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 34D: "52. Actress Rae of "American Fiction""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ISSA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 35D: "53. Online seller of handcrafted items"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ETSY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 36D: "55. "I Like ___""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that united states general who supervised the invasion of normandy and the defeat of nazi germany; 34th president of the united states (1890-1961)
- Similar words include: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower, President Eisenhower
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: IKE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 37D: "57. Baby grizzly"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an awkward and inexperienced youth
- Similar words include: young carnivore, laddie, lad
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CUB
💡 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
37 Down Clues
73 Total Clues
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