NYT Mini Crossword Hints (October 20, 2026)

What each hint reveals

Every clue on this page has the same three hints, and each opens on its own. The first is the length of the answer — the number of squares it fills. The second is its first letter. The third shows the letters it shares with the answers that cross it, in position. Only the answers page lists the words outright.

The crossing-letters hint is by far the strongest of the three. In all 28 Minis from 23 September to 20 October 2026, every white square belonged to both an Across and a Down answer, so opening it can show most or all of the word. Treat it as the last step before looking the answer up. If you only want a nudge, stop at the length and first letter.

Which clue to ask about first

Spend hints where they unlock the most squares. In a 5×5 Mini every answer crosses three to five others, so one revealed word is worth several letters elsewhere. The best candidates are the long Across answers along the top or bottom row and the first Down answer, because they share squares with almost everything.

On a Saturday 7×7 the long entries matter even more. On 17 October 2026 the grid's top four rows were full seven-letter words with no black squares between them, so each of the seven Down answers crossed all four. A hint on one of those Across words fed seven other answers at once.

A worked example: the grid with no black squares

The 30 September 2026 Mini, by Joel Fagliano, is the clearest demonstration of how the first-letter hints connect. It had no black squares at all, so every Across answer was five letters and every Down answer was five letters too.

In a grid like that, the first letters of the five Down answers are simply the top row read left to right, and the first letters of the five Across answers are the left column read top to bottom. On 30 September the Down first letters were R, S, V, P, S — which is 1-Across, RSVPS, for "'Yes, I can come,' 'No, we're out of town,' etc." The Across first letters were R, A, M, O, S — which is 1-Down, RAMOS, for "Anthony ___, star of 'Hamilton' and 'In the Heights.'"

So opening every first-letter hint on one side of the grid can give away a whole answer on the other side. If you want to keep 1-Across for yourself, open first-letter hints for the Across clues only.

Hints for each kind of clue

The first-letter hint helps some clue types more than others. Across the 307 clues in the 28 Minis from 23 September to 20 October 2026, the patterns broke down like this:

Which first letters to expect

Some letters start Mini answers far more often than others. Of the 307 answers in the four weeks to 20 October 2026, 40 began with S and 34 with A — together a quarter of all answers. P, C and B started about 7% each. At the other end, S and E were also the commonest last letters, 49 and 45 answers. A first-letter hint of S therefore narrows less than one of V or Y would.

Clues about the puzzle itself

Now and then a clue points inward, at the Mini or at another Times game, and no definition hint helps. On 19 October 2026 Ian Livengood clued 4-Down as "Number of clues in this puzzle" — the answer was TEN, which you could count straight off the clue list. On 13 October Wyna Liu clued SOLID as "Spelling Bee rank between 'Good' and 'Nice'," a reference to the ranks in the Times' Spelling Bee.

For clues like these the length hint is usually enough on its own, because once you know what kind of thing the clue wants, there are very few candidates of the right size.

Length hints on wider grids

On a 6×5 or 7×7 grid the length hint does more work, because long answers are rarer and often phrases. The 16 October 2026 grid was six squares wide, and two of its five Across answers were six-letter phrases written as one word: STOPIT for "Cut that out!" and POSTIT for "Sticky note." A length of six on a clue that sounds like something a person would say is a strong signal that the answer is two short words run together.

When two clues are identical

Occasionally a Mini prints the same clue twice. On 27 September 2026 "Alternative to theirs" was used for two Across answers, and on 20 October "What might be all tied up for a basketball game" was used twice. The two answers are always different words, so the hints for each will differ even though the clues match. Use the length hint first: it often tells the two apart at a glance.

Words that are really phrases

A length hint can mislead when the answer is a phrase written without spaces. A seven-square answer to "Alternative to body wash" was BARSOAP on 3 October — bar soap. If the length seems too long for the word you have in mind, try the same idea as two words. The first-letter hint is often the quickest way to see where the split falls.

When the hints are not up yet

This page switches to the new date's Mini at midnight Eastern. Before that, or if the Times' file for the date has not appeared, it shows the most recent Mini and says so plainly above the clues. The previous puzzle stays on the yesterday page, and older ones are in the archive.

The hints are generated from the Times' own grid data, not written by hand, so they cannot drift from the puzzle: the length is the number of squares, the first letter is the first square, and the crossings are the letters in the squares the answer shares.

Other puzzles with staged hints

The same reveal-one-thing-at-a-time approach is on the Wordle hints, Connections hints and Strands hints pages. For the whole family of New York Times games see the NYT games hub, and for how the Mini itself works, the Mini Crossword guide.

Frequently asked questions

Recent Mini Crossword answers

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