About Mini #316
Mini #316 is the daily 5×5 for Wednesday, August 12, 2026. Its grid has six black squares, laid out as three-square L-shapes in the top-left and bottom-right corners, which leaves 19 white squares for ten answers: five Across and five Down. By length, that's two five-letter, four four-letter and four three-letter answers.
The shortest clue is 1-Across, “Chimp or gorilla”, at three words; the longest is 5-Down, “Boxing win when a fighter can't continue, for short”, at nine words. Clues worth knowing about before you start:
- Marked as a short form: 5-Down, “Boxing win when a fighter can't continue, for short”
There's no fill-in-the-blank this time, so a good first stop is the shortest slot: 1-Across has only three letters. For more ways in, see the solving tips.
How this grid compares
This layout appears in 21 of the 262 daily 5×5 puzzles in our library dated up to August 12, 2026. The layout is rotationally symmetric: turn the grid upside down and the black squares land in the same places. That's two black squares more than the day before (August 11, 2026), which had four.
Like every daily 5×5 in our library, it was generated at our “easy” difficulty setting. The same date also has a 6×6 with 12 clues and a 7×7 with 16 clues.
More for August 12, 2026
Stuck? The hints for August 12, 2026 give three hints per clue, the answer key reveals one answer at a time, and there's a printable copy for solving on paper. The day before, Mini #315 (August 11, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Like a refreshing glass of tea in summer”; the day after, Mini #317 (August 13, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Luxury German cars, in the plural”.