NYT Mini Crossword Answers Today (October 20, 2026)

Reading the finished grid

The grid is drawn from the same cell data the Times uses, so black squares, numbering and answers sit exactly where they do in the game. Numbers mark the first square of each answer; an Across answer runs right from its number, a Down answer runs down from it. A square with a number can start both an Across and a Down answer, which is why 1-Across and 1-Down share a first letter.

Answers are printed as the grid holds them, in capitals and without spaces or punctuation. A run of letters that looks wrong is usually two or three words joined together: in the four weeks to 20 October 2026, INREM, ATEUP, BARSOAP, OPENBAR and ARTGALA all appeared that way.

Checking a single answer without seeing the rest

Scroll the clue list rather than the grid. Clues are grouped Across then Down and numbered in order, so you can find the one you need without your eye landing on its neighbours. If you are worried about spoiling yourself, the hints page shows only the letter count, the first letter and the letters supplied by crossing answers.

Why a clue's answer fits

Most Mini clues are straight definitions, and the answer is the obvious word once you have its length. The ones that need explaining fall into a few families, and knowing which family a clue belongs to usually explains the answer:

• Question mark at the end — a pun. "O in a tee?" (3 October) was ARMHOLE: the O is the shape of the hole in a T-shirt.
• "___" in the clue — fill in the missing word of a phrase or title. "Carne ___ (beef dish)" (24 September) was ASADA.
• Quoted speech — the answer is something a person would say with that meaning. "Sorry about that!" (23 September) was OOPS.
• "Abbr.", "for short" or "familiarly" — the answer is shortened too. "Denali and Whitney: Abbr." (9 October) was MTS.
• A number and a direction in the clue — the answer depends on another one. "See 4-Across" (27 September) only makes sense with 4-Across: GRAND plus SLAM.
• The same clue twice — two different answers for one description, as on 20 October, when "What might be all tied up for a basketball game" was both SCORE and LACES.

Clue and answer always agree

One rule explains a lot of Mini answers once you know it: the clue and the answer match grammatically. A plural clue has a plural answer, a past-tense clue has a past-tense answer, and a verb ending in -s gets an answer ending in -s. "Facilities with treadmills" on 27 September was GYMS, not GYM. "Devoured entirely" on 30 September was ATEUP, in the past tense. "Phrases differently" on 26 September was REWORDS, and "Sprouted" on 19 October was GREW.

The rule also works in reverse when you are checking an answer you are unsure of. If your word is singular and the clue is plural, or your word is in the present tense and the clue is in the past, one of them is wrong. "Takes the L" on 16 October is slang, but the -s on "Takes" still told you the answer, LOSES, would end in S.

Five-by-five, six-by-five or seven-by-seven

Don't be surprised if today's grid is not square. Saturdays are 7×7 with 14 to 18 clues, and in the 28 puzzles from 23 September to 20 October 2026 two weekday-slot grids — Sunday 4 October and Friday 16 October — were six squares wide and five tall, with a sixth Down clue. The page draws whatever shape the Times' data describes.

The letters a Mini is made of

If a square is blank and you have to guess, the odds favour a handful of letters. Across the 714 white squares in the 28 Minis from 23 September to 20 October 2026, vowels filled 39% of the grid, and ten letters did most of the work:

Three-letter answers worth recognising

Short entries are where the Mini leans on abbreviations, initialisms and crossword staples. The window had 53 three-letter answers and no two were the same, but they came in recognisable kinds: TV networks and shows (ABC, CBS, SNL), science and sports shorthand (DNA, TDS, MTS for mountains), texting slang (SMH), compass points (SSW), and crossword-flavoured fragments such as ERN — clued on 1 October as the suffix that turns north, south, east or west into northern, southern and so on — and XED for crossed out.

Rare letters cluster in these short entries and on Saturdays. Q never appeared in the four weeks, J once, Z four times and X eight — and the 26 September Saturday alone put X into WXYANDZ, XBOXONE, XER, POLEAXE and XED. If a clue mentions a generation, a console or something being crossed out, think about X early.

If the grid above is yesterday's

This page switches to the new Mini at midnight Eastern on its date. If you are reading it before then — or the Times' file for the new date has not appeared yet — the page says so above the grid and labels what you are seeing as the most recent Mini. The previous date always stays on the yesterday page, and every earlier one is in the Mini archive.

HintSheet does not solve or check the puzzle by hand. The grid and answers are copied from the Times' puzzle data automatically, which is why they match the game exactly, typography aside.

Getting faster at the Mini

The Times pitches the Mini as a crossword you can solve in seconds, and speed mostly comes from order, not vocabulary. Read every Across clue once without stopping, writing in anything certain. Then read every Down clue the same way. On a 5×5 grid, two or three sure answers usually give you a letter in every other entry, and the rest fall in a second pass.

Fill-in-the-blank clues are the easiest first entries because only one word completes the phrase. Three-letter answers are the next easiest: there are few of them and they are often common words or abbreviations. Leave the question-mark clues for last; by then the crossings will usually hand you most of the letters.

On a Saturday 7×7, start with whichever long answer you can see. Long entries cross many short ones, so a single seven-letter Across can unlock four or five Downs.

More from the Times

The Mini Crossword guide covers how the puzzle is built and who makes it, with the four-week data behind the numbers on this page. For the paper's other daily games — Wordle, Connections, Strands and Spelling Bee — the NYT games hub has today's answers for each.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Mini Crossword answers

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