In case you missed Friday’s NYT Mini Crossword puzzle, you can find the answers here:
It’s the weekend at last, and I have returned as your humble NYT Mini Crossword guide for the next week. The Saturday crossword releases at 10pm ET on Friday, so I always hop in on my Friday evening to solve it and post this guide. For whatever reason, the Sunday crossword comes out at 6pm ET on Saturday, and the Monday at 6pm ET on Sunday. In any case, let’s solve today’s, shall we?
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.
One good tactic with crossword puzzles is to try to get as many ACROSS as possible first and then you’ll find a lot of the DOWN are already done—or vice versa if the ones ACROSS are trickier.
While some of today’s words are pretty simple, some might have you stumped. You’ll find the answers below. Spoilers ahead, obviously. Skip ahead for the image of today’s solved puzzle.
ACROSS
1 — Nurses, as a drink — SIPS
5 — Extremely, in California slang — HELLA
6 — Seasonal reason for sneezin’ — POLLEN
7— Course load? — GOLFBAG
8 — Treaty co-signers — ALLIED
9 — Olympic shooting sport with clay targets — SKEET
10 — Scores of 3, 4, and 5, typically — PARS
DOWN
1 — Many pics taken on Snapchat — SELFIES
2 — “Ooookay … sure you did …” — ILLBET
3 — “Guilty” and “not guilty” — PLEAS
4 — Rocked out at karaoke night — SANG
5 — Give a yell — HOLLER
6 — Music played at a German beer garden — POLKA
7 — Sound in the audience during a horror film, maybe — GASP
Some of these were quite tricky, like 7-Across, “Course load”. I had no idea that was a GOLFBAG. Others threw me off for silly reasons—I put PLEAD instead of PLEAS for 3-Down. Some I knew right away—SKEET, POLKA, etc. Others I had to fill in, such as HELLA and ILLBET. Overall, not the most challenging Saturday ever, but still tricky enough. I kept pausing this one as I was multitasking, but I forgot a couple times and it took 3:58 to finish.
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!
