NYT Crossword Answers — Archive & Guide

Answers stay up permanently — pick a date below, or jump to a month.

The NYT Crossword, explained

The New York Times Crossword is the most widely solved crossword in the world. It debuted on February 15, 1942, with Margaret Farrar as its first editor, and has run daily since 1950. Only four people have held the editor's chair since — most famously Will Shortz, who has edited the puzzle since 1993 and still oversees it as part of the NYT Games team. Every puzzle is constructed by an independent puzzle maker, then test-solved, fact-checked and polished by the Games editors before publication.

Monday through Saturday puzzles use a 15×15 grid; the famous Sunday puzzle grows to 21×21 with roughly twice the clues. Most weekday puzzles carry a theme — a set of long answers sharing a trick or wordplay pattern — while Friday and Saturday are usually themeless, trading gimmicks for harder, more open grids. Watch out for rebus squares, where several letters share a single cell.

Difficulty by day

When do new puzzles come out?

Puzzles publish the evening before their print date: weekday puzzles at 10 p.m. ET, and weekend puzzles at 6 p.m. ET. Our team solves each puzzle the moment it drops, verifies every answer against the published solution, and posts the full answer list here shortly after — usually before midnight ET.

Do you need a subscription?

Yes — playing the full crossword requires an NYT Games (or All Access) subscription, in the app or on the web. The free tier includes the daily Mini. This site is an independent reference for checking answers and understanding tricky clues; it doesn't replace playing the real thing, and we'd encourage any regular solver to subscribe.

Official resources

Links go to The New York Times — the official home of the puzzle.