LinkedIn Crossclimb #738 Answer

🧠 Expert Logic Walkthrough

Right off the bat, I started parsing the five core clues to build the middle of our word ladder. The first clue, Alma ___, immediately brought the Latin phrase "Alma Mater" to mind, giving us our first five-letter word: MATER. This one felt like a solid lock.

Next up was Animals who burrow underground. With a five-letter constraint and a plural form implied, my first and best guess was MOLES. It’s a classic burrowing animal and a common word in these types of puzzles.

The clue Romantic partners was about as straightforward as it gets. The five-letter word MATES jumped out instantly. I penciled it in and moved on, confident it would fit somewhere in the sequence.

Then came a fun one: Word following "holy" in a rhyming expression of surprise. The classic exclamation "Holy Moley!" provided the answer here. This gave us the slightly unusual but perfectly valid word MOLEY.

For the final core clue, Bucks and stallions, e.g., the puzzle asks for the category these animals belong to. They are both adult male animals, which leads directly to the five-letter word MALES.

With our five words—MATER, MOLES, MATES, MOLEY, MALES—it was time to sort them. I noticed a clear path: MOLEY can change to MOLES (Y→S), MOLES to MALES (O→A), MALES to MATES (L→T), and MATES to MATER (S→R). This creates a solid chain: MOLEY → MOLES → MALES → MATES → MATER. Now, for the ends. The theme hint stated, "The top + bottom rows = A compound word for a thing or person that produces a lot of cash." The immediate answer is "moneymaker." This brilliantly locks our top and bottom words: MONEY and MAKER. Connecting them was simple: MONEY connects to MOLEY (N→L) at the top, and MATER connects to MAKER (T→K) at the bottom, completing our ladder perfectly.

The key to this puzzle was solving the theme hint first. Once MONEY and MAKER were established as the bookends, it confirmed the five-letter word length and provided a clear starting and ending point, making the arrangement of the middle words far less of a guessing game. The "Holy Moley" clue was a particularly satisfying piece of wordplay that added a nice touch of personality to the puzzle.

🎯 Answer: Crossclimb 738

MONEY → MOLEY → MOLES → MALES → MATES → MATER → MAKER

🔍 The Word Ladder

📊 Difficulty Rating

3.2 / 5.0

This puzzle sits comfortably in the medium-difficulty range. The core clues themselves were not overly cryptic; words like MATES and MALES were fairly gettable. The real challenge, and what elevates the difficulty, was the dependency on the theme hint. Without deciphering "moneymaker" to lock in MONEY and MAKER, a solver could get stuck trying to find the start and end points. Additionally, the Alma ___ clue requires knowledge of the Latin phrase "Alma Mater," which could be a minor hurdle for some players.

💡 Lessons Learned From Crossclimb 738

• Trust the Theme Hint: When the puzzle provides a hint for the top and bottom words, make it your number one priority. Solving it gives you invaluable anchors that make ordering the rest of the words exponentially easier.
• Look for Natural Word Chains: When sorting the middle words, look for obvious connections. The sequence MALES → MATES → MATER was a strong potential chain because three of the five letters are identical, making it a likely path.
• Embrace Common Phrases: Crossclimb often pulls answers from colloquialisms and common expressions. The "Holy Moley" clue is a perfect reminder that the answer might be found in everyday speech, not just a dictionary.
• Think in Categories: The clue Bucks and stallions, e.g. didn't ask for a synonym but for a classification. Recognizing this pattern helps you jump to the correct categorical term (MALES) instead of getting stuck on specific animal names.

🌟 Trivia

The clue Alma ___ points to the term "Alma Mater." This Latin phrase translates literally to "nourishing mother" or "bountiful mother." Its first recorded use in reference to a university was for the University of Bologna in Italy, the oldest continuously operating university in the world, to celebrate its role in nurturing its students with knowledge.

🔥 Hot News

The concept of a "moneymaker," derived from our top and bottom words MONEY and MAKER, is constantly in the news. Recently, the entertainment industry has seen massive moneymakers with films like Barbie and Oppenheimer not only dominating the box office but also sparking widespread cultural conversations and merchandise trends, proving that a single creative product can become a powerful economic engine.

❓ FAQ

What does 'Alma Mater' mean in the clue 'Alma ___'?
"Alma Mater" is a Latin phrase that means "nourishing mother." In modern English, it's used to refer to the university, college, or school that a person formerly attended. For example, someone might say, "Harvard is my alma mater."

How did you figure out the top and bottom words, MONEY and MAKER?
The theme hint was the key: "A compound word for a thing or person that produces a lot of cash." The most common and direct compound word for this description is "moneymaker." This directly gives us the two five-letter words, MONEY and MAKER, that serve as the start and end of the word ladder.

Wasn't the clue 'Animals who burrow underground' a little broad?
While many animals burrow (gophers, badgers, etc.), the constraints of a Crossclimb puzzle help narrow it down. We needed a five-letter plural word that could connect to another five-letter word by changing only one letter. MOLES is a very common answer for this type of clue and fits perfectly within the letter-swapping logic of the ladder, especially next to MOLEY.