In case you missed Thursday’s NYT Mini Crossword puzzle, you can find the answers here:
And so at last we come to the end. The end of the week. Basically the end of the month. And the end of my stint as your humble NYT Mini Crossword guide—at least for the next couple weeks. I shall pass the baton to my colleagues Kris Holt and Paul Tassi but never fear: I shall return. Have a fantabulous weekend, folks. Now let’s solve this Mini!
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!
ACROSS
1- Like crackers after the box is left open — STALE
6- Targets of facial cleansers — PORES
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
7- Patronized, as a restaurant — ATEAT
8- House occupied by a Presbyterian minister — MANSE
9- Material that’s an anagram of 1-Across and 4-Down — SLATE
DOWN
1- Bombards with texts, say — SPAMS
2- The “z” in x+y=z — TOTAL
3- Stadium’s covered counterpart — ARENA
4- Most’s opposite — LEAST
5- Lauder in the beauty aisle — ESTEE
Despite having a pretty sure sense of both 1-Across and 1-Down, this one was still quite tricky. I mostly blame 7-Across. ATEAT? I guess the comma in the clue makes us swap the words around or something. It should be EATAT as far as I’m concerned. Weird. I also didn’t know “Lauder in the beauty aisle” and had to rely on filling in other words to get there. But I learned that a Presbyterian minister lives in a MANSE. All I can think about is Manse Rayder from Game Of Thrones. I got this one in 2:01, by far the slowest I’ve been all week. Maybe I’m deteriorating . . . .
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!
