7 ways to solve New York Times (NYT) crossword puzzle clues (2024)

FAQs

7 ways to solve New York Times (NYT) crossword puzzle clues? ›

The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be a "Thursday-plus" in difficulty.

The crosswords are designed to increase in difficulty throughout the week, with the easiest on Monday and the most difficult on Saturday. The larger Sunday crossword, which appears in The New York Times Magazine, is an icon in American culture; it is typically intended to be a "Thursday-plus" in difficulty.

Most days, there are between three and five clues in each direction on a five by five grid, but the puzzles are sometimes larger, especially on Saturdays.

Our difficulty scale increases through the week, with the easiest puzzles on Monday and hardest on Saturday. Sunday puzzles should reflect midweek difficulty levels. Clues should be fresh, colorful and precise. Try to be original, and inject humor where possible.

Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest. They're just bigger.

Feyer describes himself as “a mild-mannered musician who developed an addiction to crosswords,” and he posts his solving times every day. There is, he says, a friendly competition among top-ranked solvers. For a Monday puzzle in The New York Times, his fastest time by computer was 1 minute, 22 seconds.

However, many times the blank space can be filled in with two or more words. In easier crosswords, multiple words will be indicated with (2 words) or (2 wds.), but more often than not it will be up to the solver to determine how many words fill in the space.

Fill-Ins, also known as Fill-It-Ins or Word Fill-Ins, are a variation of the common crossword puzzle in which words, rather than clues, are given, and the solver must work out where to place them.

These features mean that crossword puzzles cause large areas of your cortex to be active, and stimulate new connections in your brain. The hippocampus will then remember those new connections, strengthening both your hippocampus and cortex.

What is the acceptance rate for the New York Times crossword puzzles? ›

I got rejected probably 15, 16-plus times — it's about a 3 percent acceptance rate to get published there. They get 200 submissions a week for seven spots. Eventually, last year, they accepted the Monday puzzle, which ran in August. And then, in October, they wrote back, and we worked on this Sunday puzzle together.

According to The New York Times crosswords editor, Will Shortz, “A 'rebus' in a crossword is anything that gets entered in a square that's not a single letter of the alphabet.” That can mean you have to jam more than one letter into a square or use digits.

The Saturday crossword is actually the hardest puzzle of the week. Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest. They're just bigger.

They make it easier to unwind

Although it is tempting to unwind by watching the television or by reading on a tablet, the body should avoid screen time before bed. Puzzles provide a much better opportunity to relax, making it easier to fall asleep and properly switch off.

The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases that cross each other, by solving clues in the Across and Down columns which lead to the answers. The New York Times Crossword increases in difficulty from Monday to Saturday.

A renowned British crossword maker called Marc Breman created in 2018 what's thought to be the world's hardest cryptic crossword to date. Not only are the clues fiendishly hard, but the crossword itself is rather large, with 64 clues.

Mondays through Thursdays, we'll publish themeless puzzles that decrease in difficulty throughout the week, with a new beginner-friendly puzzle on Thursdays. You'll also find something new on Fridays: a themed puzzle, of light-to-moderate difficulty.