NYT Mini Crossword: the small grid, the people who build it, and what 28 puzzles show

Where the Mini came from

The Times introduced the Mini in 2014. Its own "About New York Times Games" text, on the Mini's game page, says so directly: since launching the Crossword in 1942 the paper has added games, and "in 2014, we introduced the Mini Crossword — followed by Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed, Tiles, Wordle, Connections and more." Wikipedia's article on The New York Times Games dates the launch to 21 August 2014 and treats the Mini as the puzzle that started the Games brand as a separate product.

The same article credits Joel Fagliano as the Mini's editor. That matches what the puzzle data shows: Fagliano is named as constructor on 13 of the 28 puzzles in our window, more than anyone else, with the rest made by a small rotating group (the table further down lists them).

Five by five — usually

The standard description, repeated in Wikipedia's crossword article, is a 5×5 grid Sunday through Friday and a 7×7 grid on Saturday. Our window mostly agrees and adds one wrinkle worth knowing before you assume the shape:

• All four Saturdays (26 September, 3, 10 and 17 October) were 7×7.
• Twenty-two of the other twenty-four days were 5×5.
• Two were six columns wide and five rows tall: Sunday 4 October and Friday 16 October. Both had six Down clues instead of five.
• Black squares ranged from none at all (30 September, a fully filled 5×5 where all ten answers were five letters) to twelve on the 3 October Saturday grid.

What a typical grid contains

Across the 28 puzzles there were 307 clues. Weekday and Sunday grids carried 10 or 11 clues each; the four Saturdays carried 18, 14, 16 and 17. Answer lengths are bunched at the size of the grid, because in a five-wide puzzle the long answers simply run edge to edge:

Who constructs it

Each day's data names its constructor. In our window five people made all 28 puzzles. The split is a snapshot of four weeks, not a fixed schedule, and it will drift — but it is useful when a byline reads unfamiliar, because the clueing voice really does vary from one constructor to the next.

The clue habits that keep coming back

Because the grid is so small, a Mini lives or dies on its clues, and a handful of conventions turn up again and again. Counting them across the 307 clues gives a rough sense of what to expect on any given day: 26 clues were written as quoted speech ("Sorry about that!" for OOPS on 23 September), 26 were fill-in-the-blank ("Carne ___ (beef dish)" for ASADA on 24 September), seven signalled a short form with "Abbr.", "for short" or "familiarly", four referred to another answer by number, four ended in a question mark to flag wordplay, and two leaned on Spanish ("Uncle, in Spanish" for TIO on 17 October, "___ favor" for POR on 26 September).

The question-mark clues are the ones that stall people. "O in a tee?" on 3 October was ARMHOLE — the O is the shape of the hole, not a letter. "Science class that really gets under your skin?" on 10 October was ANATOMY. When a clue ends in a question mark, read it as a pun first and a definition second.

Cross-reference clues are rarer but worth recognising. On 27 September, 4-Across and 8-Across together spelled GRAND SLAM, with 8-Across clued only as "See 4-Across." On 7 October, 1-Down was clued as "Body part that's a homophone of 1-Across." If a clue points at another number, solve that one first.

Twin clues and multi-word answers

Two puzzles in the window used the same clue text twice in one grid. On 27 September, "Alternative to theirs" was both YOURS and MINE; on 20 October, "What might be all tied up for a basketball game" was both SCORE and LACES. When you see a repeated clue, the two answers are different words that fit the same description — usually in different senses.

Multi-word answers are written without spaces in the grid, which hides them. INREM ("in REM") on 27 September, ATEUP on 30 September, BARSOAP on 3 October and OPENBAR and ARTGALA on 17 October all read as nonsense until you split them. If a run of letters looks impossible, try breaking it into two or three words.

Saturday is a different puzzle

The Saturday Mini is not just bigger; it plays differently. With 14 to 18 clues and seven-letter entries, it rewards a longer foothold — on 17 October the grid's top four rows were CLASSIC, RICOTTA, OPENBAR and ARTGALA, stacked full-width with no black squares between them, so every Down answer crossed all four. Getting one long Across opens several Downs at once, which is the opposite of a weekday 5×5, where a single three-letter corner is often the way in.

One Mini, start to finish: 20 October 2026

A walk through a real grid shows how little a 5×5 needs to give you. Joel Fagliano's puzzle for 20 October 2026 had four black squares — two at the top left, two at the bottom right — and ten clues. The five rows, top to bottom, read BOW, SCORE, LACES, EPCOT and WEE.

The easy way in was a short Across. "Gift decoration" in three squares is BOW, and "Small" in three squares is WEE. Those two answers sit at opposite corners, so between them they supply letters to every Down answer. With B, O and W at the top, "Lawn bowling game" becomes BOCCE, "Dunkable cookie" becomes OREO and "Direction headed by Lewis and Clark" becomes WEST.

The twin clue was the only real obstacle. "What might be all tied up for a basketball game" appeared for both 4-Across and 6-Across — one is SCORE, as in a tied score, and the other is LACES, as in tied shoes. With the Downs in place, the letters settle which is which. EPCOT, "Theme park that Walt Disney envisioned as a utopian city," filled the fourth row, and "Whole bunch" (SLEW) and "Not every hero wears one, in a saying" (CAPE) finished the grid.

Access: the Mini is now a subscriber game

For most of its life the Mini was free to play. That changed in late August 2025: Book Riot reported on 27 August 2025 that the Mini was no longer free on the web and had dropped off the Times' list of free games, with no announcement, and Wikipedia's NYT Games article says the Mini changed from free-to-play to requiring a subscription to play daily, with Tiles and Letter Boxed moving behind the subscription too.

That matters for this page in one way: many people who look up the answers have not played the grid themselves. NYT Mini Crossword answers today shows the full solution with every clue, so the puzzle can still be read and understood without a subscription; it does not reproduce the playable game.

The Midi, and how the three crosswords compare

In February 2026 the Times added a mid-sized crossword, the Midi, as a digital-only puzzle edited by Ian Livengood, with grids from 9×9 to 11×11 according to Wikipedia. That gives three daily sizes: the Mini, the Midi and the full Crossword. Wikipedia's crossword article also notes the Mini has drawn criticism, at times harsh, for being comparatively simple — which is really a description of its design goal. It is meant to be a minute or two, not an hour.

How HintSheet covers it

Four pages share the same data. The answers page shows the completed grid and every clue with its answer. The hints page gives each clue's letter count, first letter and crossing letters, one reveal at a time. The yesterday page keeps the previous date's grid in place for checking. And the Mini archive lists every date we have published.

The data comes straight from the Times' puzzle file for each date and is published automatically at midnight Eastern on the puzzle's date — never earlier, and without a human solving or checking it first. The Times does not state the Mini's release time on any page we can cite, so we do not quote one. For the Times' other daily games see the NYT games hub; if you like short word puzzles, Wordle, Connections and LinkedIn's Crossclimb are the closest neighbours, and every game we cover is listed on the HintSheet homepage.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Mini Crossword answers

Every past puzzle is in the Mini Crossword archive. New here? Start with the Mini Crossword guide.