The answer is UNTRUE, six letters. It is the most frequent answer to this one-word clue in crossword databases, but it shares the slot: PSEUDO and ERSATZ fit the same six squares and have answered the same clue. The New York Times, meanwhile, has used MOCK for it three times, so count the blanks before committing.
Six squares, three words, no shared letters
This is the rare logjam that a single crossing always breaks. Line the three six-letter candidates up and compare them square by square: UNTRUE, PSEUDO and ERSATZ never put the same letter in the same position. Whichever crossing you get, first square, last square or anything between, only one of the three can survive it.
That matters because meaning cannot help much here. The clue is a single bare word, so there is no surface to read, no hint about a statement or an object, nothing to lean on except the grid. The syndicated Eugene Sheffer puzzle used PSEUDO for this exact clue in late September 2026, while British quick crosswords have used UNTRUE for it repeatedly. Both are right; only the crossings know which one your constructor chose.
False has three separate jobs
Dictionaries split the word into several senses, and three of them matter for grids. The first is not true or correct, the sense in a false statement. The second is not faithful or loyal, as in a false friend. The third is not genuine, as in counterfeit goods, with a close cousin that covers substitutes, such as false teeth. Dictionary.com even lists a biology sense for things that only resemble the real article, as in the false acacia.
UNTRUE covers the most ground, because dictionaries define it both as not true to fact and as unfaithful, so it handles the first two senses at once. The fake family, PSEUDO, ERSATZ, MOCK and BOGUS, covers only the third. That spread is why UNTRUE is the safest first guess when all you have is the bare word and six empty squares.
Where the fake words came from
PSEUDO is Greek at root: pseudes meant false or lying, from a verb meaning to tell a lie, and English has used pseudo as a word on its own, not just as a prefix, since the late 14th century. ERSATZ is German for compensation, replacement or substitute, from a verb meaning to replace, and in German it also named units of the army reserve. It entered English as an adjective in 1875. BOGUS is American. It apparently began as the name for a counterfeiter’s coining apparatus, recorded in Ohio in 1827, and by 1839 it was an adjective meaning counterfeit, spurious or sham.
MOCK is the odd one, because it is also a verb about ridicule. As an adjective it means imitation, as in a mock trial or mock turtle soup, and a bare False clue relies on that meaning when MOCK is the fill.
The false fills by letter count
With the bare clue, these are the fills that have actually turned up:
| Letters | Answer | Sense it carries |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | MOCK | Imitation, the New York Times pick |
| 5 | BOGUS | Counterfeit, with a slangy edge |
| 5 | NOTSO | A spoken denial |
| 6 | UNTRUE | Contrary to fact, the usual default |
| 6 | PSEUDO | Pretended or sham |
| 6 | ERSATZ | An inferior substitute |
| 8 | SPECIOUS | Plausible on the surface only |
| 9 | THATSALIE | An outburst, contracted |
| 10 | THATISALIE | The same outburst, spelled out |
When the clue talks back
NOTSO and the two longest rows in that table come from a different reading. A clue printed as False! can be something a person says out loud rather than a definition, and then the answer has to be something a person could say back. Grids enter those phrases without spaces or apostrophes, so NOT SO becomes NOTSO and the longer denials run together the same way.
The trick works in reverse as well. UNTRUE itself has been clued as That’s a lie! in the LA Times and as Not so! in USA Today. An exclamation point or quotation marks on a clue are the usual sign that it is being spoken, and when you see them, try a conversational answer before a dictionary one.
