Tuesday, August 4, 2026 · #1
Mini Crossword— Tuesday, August 4, 2026
0/19 squares
1ABlock the way
Across
Down
About Mini Crossword
The mini crossword is the espresso shot of word puzzles. Five squares by five, a handful of blocked corners, and eight to ten answers that are never longer than five letters — small enough to finish on a coffee break, tight enough that one wrong letter shows up immediately in the entry crossing it. If the full-size Sunday grid is a long walk, this is a brisk lap round the block.
Every grid here is built from scratch for its date. First the generator picks a block pattern from a hand-authored library — nine shapes, all of them rotationally symmetric like a proper crossword, none of them containing an entry shorter than three letters, and every square in each of them belonging to both an across answer and a down answer. Then a constraint solver fills that pattern from a bank of nineteen hundred hand-clued words, checking after every placement that each remaining slot still has something that can go in it, and backing out the instant one does not. No word ever appears twice in the same grid.
Because the clue for each answer is also drawn fresh, a word you met last month will very likely turn up with a different definition when it reappears. Stuck? The answer page for every date opens with the shape of the grid, then the initial letters, then one full answer, and only shows you the lot if you ask — so you can take the smallest nudge that gets you moving again instead of spoiling the whole thing.
How to play Mini Crossword
- 1Click or tap any white square to select it; the highlighted entry shows which clue you are answering.
- 2Type letters to fill the entry. The cursor advances along the highlighted direction as you go.
- 3Press Tab or Enter to jump to the next clue, and use the arrow keys to move a square at a time.
- 4Switch between the across answer and the down answer through a square by tapping it again, or by pressing the space bar.
- 5Shaded squares are blocks. They hold no letters and they separate one entry from the next.
- 6Every white square belongs to exactly one across answer and one down answer, so each letter you write is checked twice.
- 7The puzzle is done when all the white squares are filled and every answer matches its clue.
Mini Crossword strategy
- Start with the fill-in-the-blank clues. A clue like "Much ___ About Nothing" or "First ___ kit" has one answer and no wordplay, so it is free scaffolding — and in a 5x5 grid, one solved entry gives you a letter in every single crossing answer.
- Never solve an entry in isolation. Once you have written a word, read the crossings it created before you move on: a three-letter down answer whose middle letter you just fixed usually has only a handful of possibilities left, and one of them will jump out.
- Use the vowel skeleton. Nearly every three- and four-letter crossword answer has a vowel in the second position, and five-letter answers very often run consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant. If you have _R_A_ , try slotting A, E, I, O and U into the gaps out loud before you reach for a hint.
- Watch the tense and the number in the clue. A plural clue wants a plural answer, a clue in the past tense wants a past-tense answer, and an abbreviation in the clue signals an abbreviated answer. That single observation will often settle a last letter — usually S, D or R — and unlock the crossing entry.
- Guess a letter and test the crossing. If you think 3-Down is either BOAT or COAT, pencil in the first letter and look at what it does to the across answer running through it. One choice will produce a word and the other will produce nonsense, and that takes five seconds rather than five minutes of staring.
- When you are truly stuck, leave the clue and come back. Mini grids are so interlocked that solving anything else on the board will hand you a letter in the entry that beat you, and the same clue often reads completely differently once you can see one of its letters.
Recent Mini Crossword puzzles
Every past puzzle is still playable, and each has its own hints and answer page.
Mini Crossword — common questions
How long should a mini crossword take?
Most solvers land between two and six minutes. Regulars who know the common short crossword words — the ALOE, OREO, ERA family — often go under ninety seconds. If you are new to crosswords, expect the first few to take ten minutes, and expect that to drop fast, because the same short answers recur across every crossword you will ever solve.
Are the grids real crosswords, or just random letters?
They are real crosswords. Every grid is rotationally symmetric, has no entry shorter than three letters, and every white square sits in both an across answer and a down answer — the same structural rules a newspaper grid follows. Every answer is a genuine word taken from a bank of clued entries, not a machine-generated letter string.
Do I need general knowledge or trivia to solve it?
Very little. The clues are definitions, common phrases and fill-in-the-blanks rather than obscure facts. The vocabulary is deliberately everyday, because a 5x5 grid is about crossing letters quickly, not about how many rivers you can name.
Why does the same word sometimes show up again?
Short words are a limited resource — there are only so many three-letter entries in English that make good crossword fill — so a word will occasionally reappear across a run of days. When it does, the clue is drawn independently, so you will usually see a different definition and have to solve it fresh.
Is everyone solving the same grid?
Yes. The puzzle is a pure function of the date in UTC, so every player who opens a given date gets exactly the same grid, the same clues and the same numbering — today, and whenever the archive is regenerated in future.
What if I get stuck and want a nudge rather than the answer?
The answer page is deliberately staged. It first tells you how many across and down entries there are and how long the longest answer is, then gives you the initial letter of each across answer, then one complete answer, and only then the full list. Stop reading at the point that unsticks you.
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