How to play the Mini Crossword
A mini crossword is a full crossword squeezed into a five by five grid. There are only a handful of clues, so a whole puzzle takes a few minutes rather than an afternoon, and it fits comfortably on a phone screen.
The clues here are plain definitions, the kind anyone can solve without knowing how crosswords work: "Oak's seed" for ACORN, "Pub drink" for ALE. There are no cryptic tricks, no anagrams and none of the strange little words that only turn up in crosswords.
The rules
Every white square holds one letter. Each run of white squares across the grid is an answer to one of the Across clues, and each run down the grid is an answer to one of the Down clues. The number printed in a square matches the number of the clue whose answer starts there.
Because nearly every square belongs to an across word and a down word at once, each letter is checked twice. An answer you are sure of hands you letters in the words that cross it, and those letters are often enough to crack a clue you had no idea about.
Controls
- Tap a square to put the cursor there. The word it belongs to lights up, and its clue is shown above the grid.
- Tap it again to switch between the across word and the down word through that square.
- Type with a keyboard, or with the keys under the grid on a phone. The cursor moves on to the next empty square in the word by itself, then on to the next word with a gap.
- Backspace deletes, stepping back through the word when the square is already empty.
- Arrow keys move around the grid, and Enter jumps to the next clue. The arrows beside the clue do the same thing by tap.
- Tap a clue in the list to jump straight to its first empty square.
If you get stuck
Three kinds of help, from gentle to generous. None of them ends the game, but they are counted, and a puzzle finished with a revealed letter does not set a best time.
- Check marks every letter you have typed that is wrong, with a red stroke through the square. It does not say what the right letter is, and empty squares are never counted as wrong. Typing over a marked square clears the mark.
- Reveal letter fills in the correct letter in the square under the cursor.
- Reveal word fills in the whole of the word the cursor is in. Revealed letters are shown in blue and are locked, so they cannot be typed over by mistake.
Solving tips
- Start with the short words. A three-letter answer has far fewer possibilities than a five-letter one, and it gives you letters in two or three other words at once.
- Fill in what you are sure of, then look at the crossings. Two or three letters in a five-letter word usually leave only one answer that fits.
- Think about the form of the answer. A clue in the past tense has an answer in the past tense; a plural clue has a plural answer. "Sketched" is DREW, not DRAW.
- Blank spaces in a clue stand for the answer: "Frying ___" is PAN.
The daily crossword
Daily mode gives everybody the same grid on the same day, with a new one at midnight in your own time zone. Solving it adds to your streak, and the result can be shared: the puzzle number, your time and whether you needed help — never the answers.
Free play makes a new grid every time, from the same bank of clues. It keeps its own best time and does not affect the daily streak.
How the grids are made
Every grid is filled in your browser from a bank of around seventeen hundred everyday words, each written with its own clue for this site. Because a word is only ever placed if it has a clue, every answer in every grid is clued.
A grid shape is chosen — each one symmetric under a half turn, as crossword grids traditionally are — and the words are fitted in one at a time, always taking next whichever slot has the fewest words left that could fit it. That finds dead ends early and fills a grid in a fraction of a second. No word appears twice in the same puzzle.
Common questions
- Are the clues cryptic?
- No. Every clue is a straightforward definition or a fill-in-the-blank, written so that someone who has never done a crossword can solve it.
- Is there a new crossword every day?
- Yes. The daily grid changes at midnight in your own time zone and is the same for everybody. Free play gives you as many extra grids as you like.
- Does checking or revealing cost me anything?
- Checking is free. Revealed letters are counted and shown on your result, and a puzzle with revealed letters does not set a best time, but it still counts towards your daily streak.
- Does it work without a physical keyboard?
- Yes. On a phone or tablet the keys under the grid do the typing. On a computer with a keyboard those keys are hidden, because the real one is quicker.