| SIXFOURSIX | One of New York's area codes- and the "code" for our theme entries' word lengths |
| LETTER | A different one (or two) of this makes the first sound in the theme entries' words, despite their alliteration |
| UPSTATE | On a horse, say in part of New York area (7) |
| MANHATTAN | It blended with spirit of New York area |
| TWO | Minimum word length in Scrabble |
| CRYPTOLOGY | Study of the hidden in the form of ciphers, codes and secret messages; or, the art of writing or solving them (10) |
| NORTHLAND | One of New Zealand's 16 regions, Te Tai-tokerau 'The Tail of the Fish' (of Maui) (9) |
| LAGUARDIA | One of New York's airports, named after the city's mayor from 1934 to 1946 (9) |
| DISLOYAL | Deceitful to trash lines covering prime parts of our Yorks area (8) |
| HUDSON | English explorer of the New York area |
| WNET | PBS station of the New York area |
| BRONX | The __, one of New York's five boroughs (5) |
| NETS | Basketball team based in Brooklyn, one of New York's two NBA sides (4) |
| LASERS | Devices producing beams of monochromatic light with a number of applications including surgery and reading bar codes and CDs (6) |
| BABINGTON | When Mary, Queen of Scots wanted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, she began exchanging messages with her co-conspirator that used a mixture of codes and ciphers known as a nomenclator. The deciphered |
| CRYPTOGRAPHY | The science of analysing and deciphering codes and ciphers (12) |
| SYD | Man's name that's the code for Australia's busiest airport |
| CDG | What is the code for France's busiest airport? (1,1,1) |
| HARLEM | New York area named after the Dutch city |
| NOLITA | New York area east of SoHo |
