“Wait for it. . . . O.K., start!” Crossword Clue

We have the 5-letter answer for “Wait for it. . . . O.K., start!” crossword clue, last seen in the New Yorker Crossword December 23, 2025 puzzle. Let us help you solve the crossword clue that has you stumped so you can finish the puzzle.

“Wait for it. . . . O.K., start!” Crossword Answer

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Helpful Hints

Hint 1: Clue Definitions

START (verb)
1. get off the ground
2. bulge outward
START (noun)
1. the time at which something is supposed to begin
2. a line indicating the location of the start of a race or a game
WAIT (noun)
1. the act of waiting (remaining inactive in one place while expecting something)
2. time during which some action is awaited
WAIT (verb)
1. look forward to the probable occurrence of
2. wait before acting

Hint 2: Anagram

Unscramble the letters below to solve for today's answer.
DONGA

More New Yorker Crossword (12/23/2025) Answers

Across

1. “The Farewell Symphony” author Edmund, whom Seán Hewitt called “the patron saint of queer literature” upon his death in June, 2025

6. Degs. held by Scott Turow and Charles Yu

9. Harpoon or javelin

14. Work at a wedding, perhaps

15. “Bury ___ Bones in the Midnight Soil” (V. E. Schwab lesbian-vampire best-seller of June, 2025)

16. Electric opening?

17. Author whose novel “Flashlight” is framed by a man’s mysterious disappearance while walking on a Japanese beach (June, 2025)

19. Journal jotting

20. From Damascus, say

21. “Say Yes to the Dress” network

22. Beltway V.I.P.

23. “Maid in Manhattan” star, for short

25. Ancient Chinese dynasty of legend

29. ___ Karenina

32. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel whose title refers to the idealistic way one of its characters takes stock of her past relationships (March, 2025)

35. Allen Ginsberg and Diane di Prima, for two

37. Merge

38. Boring routine

39. Story line

40. Capital of Zimbabwe

42. “___ Thesaurus” (Franklin Pierce Adams ode)

43. Complete one-eighty

45. Stage magicians’ feats

48. Vincenzo Latronico novel that updates Georges Perec’s “Things: A Story of the Sixties” for the Instagram age (trans. March, 2025)

50. Like the e-books on Project Gutenberg

51. Arduous journey

52. Permit

53. Thurman of Hollywood

55. Dubai's country, for short

57. Winning blackjack combo

60. Witty Wilde

63. 1984 Nettie Jones novel, rereleased in April, 2025, which the critic Namwali Serpell described as “far more daring for its time than any of the recent literary trends that have had everyone blushing and gasping and scribbling”

66. Ocean whose novel “The Emperor of Gladness” is based in part on his experience as a restaurant worker (May, 2025)

67. Some hospital-drama settings, for short

68. Élite invitees

70. Début novel from Michael Clune about a hyperliterate teen-ager who believes his anxiety is caused by a Greek god (July, 2025)

71. Mario Vargas ___ (Peruvian Nobelist who died in April, 2025)

All Answers

Down

1. Lavs

2. Domicile, in Dresden

3. ___-bitsy

4. Rips into

5. Happy-go-lucky Sesame Street resident

6. “Rabbit at Rest” author Updike

7. Partnership

8. ___ Lanka

9. “Where the Sidewalk Ends” author Silverstein

10. Thomas whose novel “Shadow Ticket” was his first in twelve years (October, 2025)

11. New Yorker’s summer hrs.

12. Flight status abbr.

13. “Mother Mary Comes to Me” memoirist Arundhati, who called her mother her “most enthralling subject” (September, 2025)

18. Forthrightness

21. Robbins whose books were called, in his Times obituary, “the perfect accompaniment to acid trips, Grateful Dead shows and weekend yoga retreats, long before those things became middle-class and mainstream” (February, 2025)

23. Fast plane

24. Krasznahorkai who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his compelling and visionary œuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art” (October, 2025)

26. Mr. Darcy or Mr. Bingley, in “Pride and Prejudice”

27. Chant

28. Relaxed

29. Unceremonious

30. Neither masculine nor feminine, grammatically

31. “Things in ___ Merely Grow” (memoir published in May, 2025, in which Yiyun Li writes, “It takes an instant for death to become a fact”)

33. Perform a poem, say

34. Signals on set

36. Window part

41. What Viola disguises herself as, in “Twelfth Night”

44. Author of “Katabasis,” a fantasy novel about a grad student who travels to Hell to save the professor she accidentally killed (August, 2025)

46. Took a flame to

47. “. . . or maybe not even that”

49. The Cavaliers, on an N.B.A. scoreboard

54. Calcium or copper

56. Jason’s ship, in myth

57. Org

58. “Conversations in Sicily” author Vittorini

59. Loch ___ monster

60. Parts of zygotes

61. Chicago ___-Times (newspaper that ran an A.I.-generated summer-reading list featuring nonexistent books, in May, 2025)

62. Relative of a haddock

63. Dandyish dresser

64. Lyricist Gershwin

65. R.R. stop

All Answers