About Mini #323
Mini #323 is the daily 5×5 for Wednesday, August 19, 2026. Its grid has four black squares, laid out as stacked pairs in the top-left and bottom-right corners, which leaves 21 white squares for ten answers: five Across and five Down. By length, that's four five-letter, four four-letter and two three-letter answers.
The shortest clue is 4-Down, “Tiny picnic pest”, at three words; the longest is 1-Across, “Big brass instrument that oompahs in a marching band”, at nine words. None of the ten clues is a fill-in-the-blank, a quotation, a question-mark clue or a marked short form.
There's no fill-in-the-blank this time, so a good first stop is the shortest slot: 4-Down has only three letters. Some clues lean on a name or title, such as 7-Across, “Middle Eastern country with capital Tehran”; if one is unfamiliar, work its crossing answers first. For more ways in, see the solving tips.
How this grid compares
This layout appears in 23 of the 269 daily 5×5 puzzles in our library dated up to August 19, 2026. The layout is rotationally symmetric: turn the grid upside down and the black squares land in the same places. The day before (August 18, 2026) also had four black squares, arranged differently.
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 14 clues.
More for August 19, 2026
Stuck? The hints for August 19, 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 #322 (August 18, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Send a document over a phone line”; the day after, Mini #324 (August 20, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Similar or related”.