In case you missed Friday’s NYT Mini Crossword puzzle, you can find the answers here:
Welcome back to your friendly neighborhood Mini Crossword guide! I’m your host, Erik Kain, taking over from my colleagues Paul Tassi and Kris Holt as part of our puzzle-game-guide rotations. It’s almost the end of summer, which is crazy. But the nights are getting cooler as autumn begins its ascent. Soon the leaves will be changing. Winter is coming. But we mustn’t let any of that distract us from the task at hand—solving today’s Mini Crossword!
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 — Shortens, as a skirt — HEMS
5 — What each word in “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles” is a stand-in for — PLANET
7 — Puzzling question — RIDDLE
8 — Nonhuman “child” — PET
9 — You reap what you ____ — SOW
10 — Agrees to receive promotional emails, say — OPTSIN
12 — Feats for gymnasts or bowlers — SPLITS
13 — What some teachers claim to have in the backs of their heads — EYES
DOWN
1 — “I’ve ____ it up to here with you!” — HAD
2 — Calls off the relationship — ENDSIT
3 — Cantaloupes and the like — MELONS
4 — Hearty soup — STEW
6 — Like polo shirts and varsity jackets — PREPPY
8 — Cat or cow, in yoga — POSE
11 — Feminine family nickname — SIS
I definitely struggled a bit with this one, partly because I’ve been off the rotation for two weeks and I’m just a bit rusty, and Saturday is always the hardest day of the week. I struggled with 12 Across the most, but filling in the other words made it pretty obvious. I always get a little thrown off by the two-word answers as well, like OPTSIN or ENDSIT because I’m just not expecting it to be two words. 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!
