Mini Crossword

What is Mini Crossword?

Mini Crossword is a small, fast crossword: a 5x5 grid with about ten clues that usually takes just a minute or three. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, everyone gets the same one, and every past daily stays free in the archive. When you want more, the practice set has extra puzzles that never appear as dailies.

Every grid and clue is written for this site. The answers are everyday words, with no obscure crossword-only vocabulary, and the clues mix plain definitions, fill-in-the-blanks and a little wordplay. It plays well on a phone, with a built-in keyboard and a clue bar under the grid, and on a computer, where you type straight into the grid and see every clue at once.

How to play Mini Crossword

1. Tap a square to select it. The highlighted row or column is the word you're filling, and its clue appears in the bar under the grid.
2. Type the answer with the on-screen keyboard or your own keyboard. The cursor skips squares you've already filled and moves to the next clue when a word is complete.
3. Tap the selected square again, or tap the clue bar, to switch between Across and Down. The arrows beside the clue step to the previous or next clue.
4. Stuck? Check marks wrong letters in red, Reveal fills in a square, word or the whole puzzle, and Clear wipes letters. Pencil writes grey, tentative guesses.
5. Fill every square correctly to stop the clock. Then share your time without spoilers and come back tomorrow to grow your streak.

Mini Crossword tips and strategy

• Start with the fill-in-the-blank clues. They're usually the quickest answers and give you letters for the crossings.
• Read both directions. If an Across answer won't come, the Down answers that cross it each give you one of its letters.
• Watch the clue's tense and number: a clue in the past tense wants a past-tense answer, and a plural clue usually wants a plural answer.
• A question mark at the end of a clue means wordplay, so look for a pun or a second meaning.
• Use Pencil for a hunch, then ink it in once a crossing letter confirms it.
• Going for speed? Turn off Skip filled squares in Settings if you like to overwrite as you go.

Mini crossword rules

A mini crossword follows the same rules as a full-size one, just smaller. Every white square belongs to one Across answer and one Down answer, and every answer is at least three letters long. Black squares separate words and are placed symmetrically, so the grid looks the same when you turn it upside down. Numbers in the corner of a square tell you where each answer starts.

There's no penalty for wrong guesses. The puzzle is solved when every square holds the right letter. If the grid is full but something is off, you'll get a gentle nudge to keep looking, and you can use Check to find the mistake.

Strategy for solving faster

Fast solvers rarely go in order. They scan for the easiest clue anywhere in the grid, write it in, and let the crossing letters do the rest. In a 5x5 grid every letter you place helps two answers, so a single sure answer along the top row hands you the first letter of up to five Down answers.

When you're stuck, think about common letter patterns: many five-letter words end in E, S, Y, or ER, and vowels tend to alternate with consonants. If you're sure of most of a word, type it in with Pencil and see whether the crossings make sense.

Daily puzzle, archive and streaks

The daily puzzle changes at midnight in your time zone. Solve it on its day without using Reveal and your streak grows by one; Check and Autocheck are allowed. Solve without any help at all and the result earns a star. Older dailies wait in the Archive, and the Practice tab holds extra puzzles. Archive and practice solves count toward your stats but not your streak. Your progress, times and stats are saved on your device, so you can close the tab mid-puzzle and pick up where you left off.

Mini Crossword FAQ