We’ve come to the end of the road. This is my last NYT Mini Guide for the next couple of weeks. I pass the baton to my colleagues, Kris Holt and Paul Tassi, who will guide you along your crossword path until I return. Let’s dive right in!
Looking for yesterday’s NYT Mini Crossword? Check out our hints and answers right here.
The NYT Mini is a smaller, quicker, more digestible, bite-sized version of the larger and more challenging NYT Crossword, and unlike its larger sibling, it’s free-to-play without a subscription to The New York Times. You can play it on the web or the app, though you’ll need the app to tackle the archive.
Spoilers ahead!
How To Solve Today’s Mini Crossword
Hints and Clues
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
We’ll start with some extra clues:
The extra clue today is this: The “circled” boxes spell out the pieces used in the new NYT game Pips, which you can read about here.
Before we get to the answers, here’s the first letter for each word in today’s Mini.
Across
1A. Places to store shovels and leaf blowers → Ss
5A. Coating for Babybel cheese → W
6A. “___ vs. Predator” (2004 sci-fi film) → A
8A. Streaming glitch → L
9A. Docking spots → P
10A. Feature of a Southern accent → T
14A. Sweet potato lookalike → Y
15A. Top-notch, informally → P
17A. Greenskeeper’s roll of grass → S
18A. Campfire remnants → A
Down
1D. Nickname for the Florida Gators football stadium, with “the” → S
2D. “2001: A Space Odyssey” villain → H
3D. Cast out from a country → E
4D. “Uptown Funk” and “Downtown,” for two → S
7D. “Can I bend your ___ for a second?” → E
10D. Like an ambitious, competitive personality → T
11D. Simple-to-play card game for two → W
12D. Simple-living sect → A
13D. Shop owner’s stock → G
16D. Barkeep on “The Simpsons” → M
Okay, onto the answers! Remember, spoilers ahead!
Across:
1A. Places to store shovels and leaf blowers → SHEDS
5A. Coating for Babybel cheese → WAX
6A. “___ vs. Predator” (2004 sci-fi film) → ALIEN
8A. Streaming glitch → LAG
9A. Docking spots → PIERS
10A. Feature of a Southern accent → TWANG
14A. Sweet potato lookalike → YAM
15A. Top-notch, informally → PRIMO
17A. Greenskeeper’s roll of grass → SOD
18A. Campfire remnants → ASHES
Down:
1D. Nickname for the Florida Gators football stadium, with “the” → SWAMP
2D. “2001: A Space Odyssey” villain → HAL
3D. Cast out from a country → EXILE
4D. “Uptown Funk” and “Downtown,” for two → SONGS
7D. “Can I bend your ___ for a second?” → EAR
10D. Like an ambitious, competitive personality → TYPEA
11D. Simple-to-play card game for two → WAR
12D. Simple-living sect → AMISH
13D. Shop owner’s stock → GOODS
16D. Barkeep on “The Simpsons” → MOE
I feel like the New York Times accidentally published their Saturday Mini Crossword a day earlier. This Mini was way harder than a typical Friday edition. It’s a very clever puzzle, though! As you can see, the crossword itself looks like a domino, and when you fill in the circled letters it spells DOMINOES. It must be an homage to the new NYT game Pips.
As far as solving this monster, I was lucky to just know enough of these to fill in the rest. I was pretty sure about SHEDS because my current house has like six sheds, all of which were there when I bought it…from people whose last name was Shedd. I am not kidding. I knew for sure that 6-Across was ALIEN and was 99% sure that 4-Down was SONGS. 7-Down was clearly EAR.
In the second block, YAM was an obvious sweet potato and ASHES seemed like a safe bet. 12-Down was obviously AMISH. And MOE is the bartender from The Simpsons. At this point, I had enough filled in to start taking a crack at the rest. The whole thing took me 1:46 but I could see this one taking people longer just because of how odd and different it is. But also fun! See you in a couple weeks, Crosswordlers!
How did you do? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
If you also play Wordle, I write guides about that as well. You can find those and all my TV guides, reviews and much more here on my blog. Thanks for reading!
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