LinkedIn Crossclimb #738 Answer & Analysis

🧠 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.

🔍 The Word Ladder