A hard crossword clue is a master of wordplay and crossword lingo, and will give your brain a workout. Ready for a challenge?
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Town at the eighth mile of the Boston Marathon
Letters: 6
The answer to this hard crossword clue inspired a new principle for avid solvers, called “The Natick Principle,” so christened in honor of the answer, a small Beantown suburb. Michael Sharp, aka Rex Parker of the blog Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, says hard crossword clues answered by a proper noun (that wouldn’t be familiar to at least a quarter of the solving public) should be crossed with “reasonably common words and phrases or very common names.” That way, you at least have a chance to figure out a clue you’ve never heard of because the cross clues are gettable.
Answer: NATICK
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Strips in a club
Letters: 5
Master crossword constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley explains how hard crossword clues and answers can stretch your mind to be more elastic. There are easier crossword puzzle clues for this answer, like “meat for breakfast,” but “strips in a club” makes your mind go to a totally different place. You’re probably not thinking of a club sandwich, which is where you need to be to get this answer.
Answer: BACON
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La Bamba actor Morales
Letters: 4
Lots of crossword puzzles feature this answer, and it’s clued in a variety of ways from tough to easy. It’s a word with lots of vowels and an “S,” so it provides a nice fill to a crossword grid. It’ll sometimes get clued with “Tony on NYPD Blue.” That clue provides another stylistic hint to let you know that you’re looking for a name, because of the use of the first name Tony in the clue.
Answer: ESAI
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Group of crows
Letters: 6
The famed New York Times crossword puzzle gets harder as the week goes on, with Monday’s being the easiest and Saturday’s the toughest. (Sunday’s puzzle has a mid-week difficulty, but is larger.) Monday and Saturday puzzles could contain the same answers, but Saturday’s clues will be way more challenging. As far as this hard crossword clue about crows, editors Will Shortz and Joel Fagliano typically don’t use clues that are grim or overly dark. The clue refers to this word’s less obvious meaning, a collective noun for crows, and doesn’t have anything to do with premeditated killing. This misdirection mirrors the layered wordplay in tricky detective riddles, where meaning hides in plain sight.
Answer: MURDER
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Leaning column?
Letters: 9
When you see a crossword puzzle clue with a question mark, you can plan on having some fun to find the answer. Parker says it’s important to clue in to crossword terms like wordplay (puns) and crosswordese (words frequent in puzzles, but not in real life). This “leaning column?” clue is definitely wordplay: It has nothing to do with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The question mark lets you know you need to think differently, and the answer is OPED PIECE. Still confused? Read it as op-ed, aka a newspaper column expressing an opinion, or you know, a leaning. This particular mix of wit and wordplay is what ignited a global obsession when Arthur Wynne invited readers to solve the world’s first crossword puzzle in 1913.
Answer: OPED PIECE
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Trilbies
Letters: 4
Some crossword aficionados consider “Trilbies,” clued back in 1987, to be the hardest crossword clue of all time. Part of the fun for solvers is figuring out obscure words and using knowledge of little-known trivia to find the answer. It might help you to know that the word Trilby refers to a character in an 1894 novel who had beautiful feet. It also turns up as a synonym for foot in 1911, and in a crossword puzzle dictionary in the 1970s. Talk about obscure!
Answer: FEET
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Pandora’s domain
Letters: 13
You can count on crossword puzzles to be filled with all kinds of trivia related to opera, classical music, literature, geography and mythology. Crossworders possess an inner treasure trove of classical knowledge they can pull up to fill a grid. But you’ll also need a firm grasp on popular culture and the digital age, because the answer here has nothing to do with the Greek myth of Pandora in Hesiod’s Works and Days.
Answer: INTERNET RADIO
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Peak south of Stromboli
Letters: 4
The answer to this clue shows up in crossword puzzles fairly regularly. Sometimes it has easy clues and sometimes they’re harder. If you ever get a clue looking for an Italian volcano, you can pretty much count on the answer being ETNA. It can also be clued as “Sicily smoker” (note the wordplay) or “Volcano of Sicily” (pretty straightforward). Watch out for clues like “Mount that’s a poker term when read backward.” Get it?
Answer: ETNA
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“Yep, perfectly clear”
Letters: 7
You can always rely on crossword puzzle answers appearing in the same form as their clues. In this case, the clue is surrounded by quotations, meaning it’s a spoken phrase. It’s also casual and slangy in the way it uses the word yep. So you can be sure that the answer will be a phrase that indicates the same thing, and that contains informal language or slang.
Answer: I HEAR YA
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Room off an ambulatory
Letters: 4
The answer here is more crosswordese: It’s hard or easy to get depending on how challenging the clue is. In this case, the word ambulatory (an adjective related to walking) is pretty obscure, unless you know the secondary meaning: A noun referring to a church aisle. If the clue is four letters and has something to do with a church or an altar, the answer is often (as it is in this case) APSE.
Answer: APSE
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[Boo-hoo!]
Letters: 5
You can bet you’re in for some mind-bending hijinks when a hard crossword clue is in brackets. Generally, that means that the clue refers to non-verbal communication or some other indirect reference, like “[Over here!]” for PSST. However, there aren’t hard and fast rules for brackets in crossword puzzles. One of the aspects that makes tough clues so much fun for wordies is their nuanced wordplay that makes you think outside the box.
Answer: IM SAD
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Lead-in to ops
Letters: 3
Crossword puzzles will often have clues that refer to prefixes, suffixes or words or terms that come before or after the answer. Clues will try to trip you up a little bit by using indirect phrases so you’re thrown off the trail. In this case, the clue wants you to think of three letters that could come before ops. The answer is SYS, as in sysops. That’s the term for administrators on websites or message boards, and is short for “systems operator.” That’s probably the first thing that leaps to mind, right?
Answer: SYS
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Word repeated four times in the last line of Shakespeare’s ‘All the world’s a stage’ speech
Letters: 4
Brush up on all your Shakespeare factoids because they always turn up in crossword puzzles. You’ll need to know the plays for clues like “A Winter’s ___.” Fill in the blank with the answer TALE. Remember characters like OBERON, “King of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It’s also a good idea to brush up on notable lines from the plays. In the case of this clue, you’ll need to be familiar with Act II, Scene VII of As You Like It. Jaques’ speech expounds on the seven ages of man, from infant through adulthood to “second childishness,” and finally reaches the line that contains the answer: “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” (Sans is French for “without,” by the way).
Answer: SANS
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Salmagundi
Letters: 4
Crossword puzzles often refer to the secondary meaning of terms to get at the answer. It’s a tactic that puzzle creators use to leave you stumped. Salmagundi is an English salad composed of a bunch of different ingredients including meat, anchovies, veggies and spices, and often refers to any mixture or hodgepodge. It’s also been used to clue this answer, OLIO, which is another one of those words that turns up fairly often in crosswords. It does refer to a Spanish stew, but also keep your eyes open for clues that refer to similar conglomerations, like a mishmash, an assortment or collection, a mixed bag, a spicy stew or a little bit of this and that.
Answer: OLIO
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Sources:
- Michael Sharp, crossword blogger at Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle
- Brendan Emmett Quigley, master crossword constructor
- Business Insider: “14 crossword puzzle clues you can only solve if you’re really smart”
- New York Times: “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle”
- Chronicle of Higher Education: “What’s a 9-Letter Word for ‘King of CrossWorld’?”
- Academy of American Poets: “As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world’s a stage]”
- New York Times: ”In a State of Nirvana”
