We’ve all been there: you’re staring at 9-Down, you know the vibe is pure rage, but ANGRY just won’t fit the six boxes in front of you. That’s “be furious” doing exactly what it’s designed to do — pushing you off the obvious word and toward an idiom instead.
The answer is SEE RED. It ran as 9-Down in the NYT puzzle dated August 24, 2025, clued straight — no question mark, no pun, just “Be furious.” That last detail matters more than it looks: a question mark after a clue tells you the answer is wordplay or a stretch (“Be furious?” might point somewhere weirder, like a pun on a name or brand). Without one, the NYT is telling you it wants the closest natural idiom for the phrase, and “see red” is exactly that — the everyday expression for snapping into sudden anger, the way a bull supposedly reacts to a red cape.
If SEE RED doesn’t fit your grid, this clue has appeared with shorter fills too, depending on the puzzle and the day of the week: RAGE and FUME at four letters, STEAM at five, SEETHE at six (a quieter, simmering cousin of SEE RED rather than a sudden flare-up).
Why Constructors Reach for Idioms Here
“Be ___” clues are a tell once you’ve seen enough of them. They’re rarely asking for a single adjective — they’re asking for the verb phrase that describes becoming that state.
- “Be quiet” becomes PIPE DOWN.
- “Be still” becomes STAY PUT.
- “Be furious” becomes SEE RED.
Once you recognize that pattern, a whole category of clues that used to stump you starts clicking faster, because you stop hunting for synonyms and start hunting for phrases people actually say out loud.
It’s also a letter-efficient choice for constructors. SEE RED packs three vowels into six letters with a clean ending, which makes it easy to cross with other entries — part of why it keeps resurfacing in NYT grids rather than being a one-off. Constructors lean on idioms like this precisely because they’re flexible building blocks, not because they’re trying to be obscure.
A Word on “SEERED”
If you’ve seen sites listing the answer as the single word “SEERED,” that’s not a real word — it’s “SEE RED” with the space stripped out by sloppy scraping, sometimes mistakenly explained as a play on “seared” (as in, scorched meat). It isn’t related. The answer is two words, and the “burned” connection some sites draw is a guess dressed up as an explanation.
Other Anger Clues That Use the Same Logic
Once you’ve got SEE RED locked in, a few related clue-and-answer pairs tend to recur in NYT grids and are worth keeping in your back pocket:
- “Boil” or “Steam” — often clued as standalone verbs for anger rather than idioms, usually shorter fills (4-5 letters)
- “Fly off the handle” or “Do a slow burn” — longer idiom clues that point toward multi-word phrasal answers
- “Become incensed” or “Become enraged” — more literal clue phrasing, usually pointing to single-word answers like SEETHE or FUME
Recognizing which register a clue is written in — literal definition versus idiom versus pun — is most of the battle with this category of clue.
Quick Reference
| Letters | Likely Answer | When It Fits |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | RAGE / FUME | Short fills, early-week grids |
| 5 | STEAM | Mid-length anger clues |
| 6 | SEETHE | Slow-burn, internalized anger |
| 6 | SEE RED | Confirmed NYT answer, 9-Down, Aug 24 2025 |
A note on sourcing: a couple of secondary crossword-answer sites describe this same puzzle differently from each other — one calls it a Sunday grid built around company-name anagrams, another lists it as a standard NYT Daily titled “Mixed Company.” Since those don’t agree and neither is a primary NYT source, we’re not assigning a constructor name here until that’s confirmed against the NYT’s own archive. A wrong attribution does more damage than no attribution.
How to Get Faster at This Clue Type
A few habits that help with “be ___” and similar idiom-driven clues going forward:
- Solve the crosses first. If you’re torn between SEETHE and SEE RED, fill in adjacent answers to confirm the letter count before committing.
- Say the clue out loud. Idiom clues usually reveal themselves faster when spoken — “be furious” naturally invites “see red” as a spoken response in a way staring at the page doesn’t.
- Track the day of the week. Monday and Tuesday grids favor more literal, dictionary-adjacent answers. By Thursday or the Sunday puzzle, expect idioms and wordplay to dominate.
- Trust the grid over any answer site — including this one. If your crossing letters don’t match SEE RED, the puzzle you’re solving may simply be using a different answer for this clue than the one referenced here.
The Bottom Line
For the August 24, 2025 NYT puzzle, “Be furious” at 9-Down resolves to SEE RED — a clean, idiom-driven answer with no wordplay twist attached. If your grid calls for a different letter count, RAGE, FUME, STEAM, or SEETHE are the most likely substitutes. The bigger skill worth carrying forward is recognizing “be ___” as a signal to think in phrases, not single words — that pattern shows up constantly across NYT grids well beyond this one clue.
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