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 (33 clues)
🧩 1A: "1. Whack to the head, in slang"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DOPESLAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2A: "9. Noted doomsday prepper"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the hebrew patriarch who saved himself and his family and the animals by building an ark in which they survived 40 days and 40 nights of rain; the story of noah and the flood is told in the book of genesis
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NOAH
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3A: "13. Prognosticator's shout"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ICALLEDIT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4A: "15. Game played on a grass or dirt court"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that italian bowling played on a long narrow dirt court
- Similar words include: bocci, boccie
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BOCCE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5A: "16. Occasion to brush up together?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: STUDYDATE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6A: "17. Weird Al Yankovic's "Straight ___ Lynwood""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OUTTA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7A: "18. Attention magnet, say"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CELEB
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8A: "19. Like Queen Elizabeth, but not Queen Camilla"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that exercising power or authority
- Similar words include: ruling, reigning
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: REGNANT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9A: "21. Deal with The Devil?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that any of a set of (usually 72) cards that include 22 cards representing virtues and vices and death and fortune etc.; used by fortunetellers
- Similar words include: tarot card
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TAROT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10A: "23. TV program with its time of day in its name"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LATESHOW
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11A: "24. Brit's "bog""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a toilet in britain
- Similar words include: W.C., closet, water closet
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LOO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12A: "25. Global auction house"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EBAY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13A: "26. Gain competitor"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a period marked by distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event
- Similar words include: earned run average, epoch, geological era
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ERA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14A: "27. How one lives in the face of an inscrutable future"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DAYTODAY
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🧩 15A: "30. Org. that may allow religious headwear in pictures"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DMV
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🧩 16A: "31. Planted oneself"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the seventh and last day of the week; observed as the sabbath by jews and some christians
- Similar words include: Saturday, baby-sit, posture
- Opposite of: stand, arise
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SAT
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🧩 17A: "32. Harmless growth"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SKINTAG
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🧩 18A: "35. Issa of "Insecure""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: RAE
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🧩 19A: "36. Spanish diminutive suffix"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ITO
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🧩 20A: "37. Reduced demand for refrigerated trucking, in a way"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ATELOCAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21A: "39. Illicit decampment"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a rapid escape (as by criminals)
- Similar words include: head for the hills, take to the woods, thresh
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LAM
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22A: "40. 1968 live folk album"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ARLO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23A: "42. When repeated, something often said to be "deep""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DOO
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🧩 24A: "43. Sheer quantity of awesome"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EPICNESS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25A: "45. Slacks off"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the state of an engine or other mechanism that is idling
- Similar words include: laze, idle, stagnate
- Opposite of: work, run
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: IDLES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26A: "48. "Your request is denied""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NOCANDO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27A: "49. Shrub with a "staghorn" variety"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that wood of a sumac
- Similar words include: sumach, shumac
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SUMAC
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28A: "51. Word derived from the Greek for "headdress of Persian kings""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a jeweled headdress worn by women on formal occasions
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TIARA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29A: "52. Flash point?"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: AHAMOMENT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30A: "56. Heavenly figure, in German"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ENGEL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31A: "57. One that can put a meal on ice"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: POLARBEAR
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32A: "58. Brood"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that agitation resulting from active worry
- Similar words include: grizzle, lather, grudge
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: STEW
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33A: "59. Abstain ... as suggested by the black squares in this puzzle"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that practice teetotalism and abstain from the consumption of alcoholic beverages
- Similar words include: dry
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TEETOTAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🔍 Down Clues - Strategic Hints (33 clues)
🧩 1D: "1. Region of a plane bounded by a circle, in geometry"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that sound recording consisting of a disk with a continuous groove; used to reproduce music by rotating while a phonograph needle tracks in the groove
- Similar words include: magnetic disc, phonograph record, saucer
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DISC
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 2D: "2. Scorpion's legs, e.g."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the cardinal number that is the sum of seven and one
- Similar words include: VIII, octad, eight
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OCTET
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 3D: "3. Abdul with the #1 albums "Forever Your Girl" and "Spellbound""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PAULA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 4D: "4. Getting on"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that people who are old collectively
- Similar words include: senior, aged, older
- Opposite of: young
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ELDERLY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 5D: "5. Shifty type"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a shifty deceptive person
- Similar words include: dodger, fox
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SLYBOOTS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 6D: "6. Was up"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that diode such that light emitted at a p-n junction is proportional to the bias current; color depends on the material used
- Similar words include: precede, extend, moderate
- Opposite of: follow
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LED
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 7D: "7. Pioneering mathematician Lovelace"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an enzyme found in mammals that can catalyze the deamination of adenosine into inosine and ammonia
- Similar words include: adenosine deaminase
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ADA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 8D: "8. Center of a drupe"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a sizeable hole (usually in the ground)
- Similar words include: cavity, fossa, play off
- Opposite of: Heaven
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: PIT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 9D: "9. Meat and potatoes, e.g."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a content word that can be used to refer to a person, place, thing, quality, or action
- Similar words include: noun
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: NOUNS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 10D: "10. D8 pieces in Dungeons & Dragons, e.g."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that any polyhedron having eight plane faces
- Similar words include: octahedron
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: OCTAHEDRA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 11D: "11. "Don't attract attention to yourself""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ACTNORMAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 12D: "12. When squirrels may thermoregulate by splooting"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HEATWAVE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 13D: "14. Extra-large storage unit"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a unit of information equal to 1000 gigabytes or 10^12 (1,000,000,000,000) bytes
- Similar words include: TB, TiB, tebibyte
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TERABYTE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 14D: "15. Solving Wordle in five guesses, colloquially"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that an evil spirit
- Similar words include: bogy, bogie
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: BOGEY
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 15D: "20. H, to the Hellenes"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a terrorist organization organized in 1959 by student activists who were dissatisfied with the moderate nationalism of the traditional basque party; want to create an independent homeland in spain's western pyrenees
- Similar words include: Basque Fatherland and Liberty, Basque Homeland and Freedom, Euskadi ta Askatasuna
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ETA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 16D: "22. Stole"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that require (time or space)
- Similar words include: get hold of, select, claim
- Opposite of: disclaim, refuse
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: TOOK
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 17D: "23. Rough digs"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: LEANTOS
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 18D: "27. One of many in a trend line"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DATAPOINT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 19D: "28. Period satirized in "Dr. Strangelove""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ATOMICAGE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 20D: "29. Antibacterial product introduced in 1948"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: DIALSOAP
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 21D: "31. "Sometimes" has two of them"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SILENTES
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 22D: "33. German-based supermarket with about 2,500 stores in the U.S."
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ALDI
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 23D: "34. Friendly, respectful person"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ________
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: GOODSORT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 24D: "38. 1970s "howcatchem" TV series"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that any of various tall perennial herbs constituting the genus frasera; widely distributed in warm dry upland areas of california, oregon, and washington
- Similar words include: deer's-ear, deer's-ears, American columbo
- Pattern: _______
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: COLUMBO
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 25D: "40. Log"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ANNAL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 26D: "41. First color that babies can see, after black and white"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that red color or pigment; the chromatic color resembling the hue of blood
- Similar words include: Red River, cherry-red, carmine
- Opposite of: gain
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: RED
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 27D: "44. Eponym of the A.L. batting title award"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that englishman and cavalier poet whose lyric poetry was favored by charles i (1595-1639)
- Similar words include: Thomas Carew
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CAREW
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 28D: "46. Become acquainted virtually"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: EMEET
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 29D: "47. World capital next to the Sarawat Mountains"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that the capital and largest city of yemen; on the central plateau
- Similar words include: Sana, Sana'a
- Pattern: _____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: SANAA
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 30D: "50. One of three keys to a PC reboot"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ____
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: CTRL
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 31D: "53. Sizzling"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that used of physical heat; having a high or higher than desirable temperature or giving off heat or feeling or causing a sensation of heat or burning
- Similar words include: live, spicy, raging
- Opposite of: cold
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: HOT
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 32D: "54. It's off limits if you 59-Across"
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Think of something that a general name for beer made with a top fermenting yeast; in some of the united states an ale is (by law) a brew of more than 4% alcohol by volume
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: ALE
💡 Remember this word for future puzzles!
🧩 33D: "55. West who said "I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it""
🎯 Solving Hints:
- Pattern: ___
🔓 Click to reveal answer (spoiler alert!)
Answer: MAE
💡 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
33 Across Clues
33 Down Clues
66 Total Clues
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