What is the answer to the crossword clue "benefit"?

There is more than one. 16 words in our dictionary fit this clue, and which one a puzzle wants depends on the length of the slot and the crossing letters. Four squares is usually PERK, short for perquisite and the everyday word for a benefit attached to a job. GAIN also fits four and is the more abstract of the two.

How many letters is the answer to "benefit"?

Anything from 3 to 10. The length with the most candidates is 4. Count the squares in your grid and read only that row of the table.

How reliable are these answers?

6 of the 16 appear in two independently compiled reference works, WordNet and Moby Thesaurus, rather than one. All of them are in the 173,000-word dictionary this site searches. None of them comes from any published puzzle.

Crossword clue

Benefit crossword clue

16 words in our dictionary can answer the crossword clue "benefit", from 3 letters up to 10, grouped below by the length of your slot.

Written by Blake Boege

Answers by length

8 different lengths answer this one. Yours is whichever row matches the squares in the grid.

Letters	Answers
3	net
4	gainconfirmed by two sources perk sack sakeconfirmed by two sources
5	clear
6	profitconfirmed by two sources reward
7	welfareconfirmed by two sources pyramid
8	interestconfirmed by two sources
9	advantageconfirmed by two sources profiteer
10	capitalise capitalize perquisite

What this list looks like

If your slot is 4 wide you have the most to choose from, with 4 candidates.

The short ones are worth learning: NET at 3 letters, which is where a setter goes when the grid is tight.

3 of these mean the same as the clue and 13 are kinds of it, which is a distinction worth holding on to when two look equally good.

Which one does the setter mean?

Four squares is usually PERK, short for perquisite and the everyday word for a benefit attached to a job. GAIN also fits four and is the more abstract of the two.

How these differ

The list runs from the concrete to the abstract. PERK and PERQUISITE are the same word long and short, and mean something extra beyond pay. PROFIT, GAIN and NET are financial and measurable. ADVANTAGE and INTEREST are positional: to have an interest in something is to benefit from how it turns out. WELFARE and REWARD are what a benefit is for rather than what it is. SAKE is the odd one and belongs to the phrase for the benefit of, as in for my sake.

Still stuck? Filter by the letters you have

Got a crossing letter? The word finder searches the same dictionary as this page, with a box for the first letter, the last, and anything in between.

Where these answers come from

Worth saying where this list comes from. Every word above is recorded by WordNet as meaning “benefit” or as naming a kind of it, and each one is in the 173,000-wordlist this site searches. Moby Thesaurus lists 6 of them too. We hold no newspaper's answer key and reproduce no published crossword.

Common questions

What is the answer to the crossword clue "benefit"?: There is more than one. 16 words in our dictionary fit this clue, and which one a puzzle wants depends on the length of the slot and the crossing letters. Four squares is usually PERK, short for perquisite and the everyday word for a benefit attached to a job. GAIN also fits four and is the more abstract of the two.
How many letters is the answer to "benefit"?: Anything from 3 to 10. The length with the most candidates is 4. Count the squares in your grid and read only that row of the table.
How reliable are these answers?: 6 of the 16 appear in two independently compiled reference works, WordNet and Moby Thesaurus, rather than one. All of them are in the 173,000-word dictionary this site searches. None of them comes from any published puzzle.