About Mini #325
Mini #325 is the daily 5×5 for Friday, August 21, 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, “Purchase”, at one word; the longest is 2-Down, “Things some claim to spot in the sky, briefly”, at nine words. Clues worth knowing about before you start:
- Written as a quotation: 3-Down, “Yeah, sure”
- Marked as a short form: 7-Across, “Tax-collecting U.S. agency, in brief”; 2-Down, “Things some claim to spot in the sky, briefly”; 5-Down, “Conflict of 1914-1918, in brief”
There's no fill-in-the-blank this time. 3-Down, “Yeah, sure”, is written as a quotation, so try saying it out loud and thinking of another way to say the same thing. Some clues lean on a name or title, such as 7-Across, “Tax-collecting U.S. agency, in brief” and 4-Down, “Hammer-wielding Marvel superhero”; 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 22 of the 271 daily 5×5 puzzles in our library dated up to August 21, 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 20, 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 21, 2026
Stuck? The hints for August 21, 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 #324 (August 20, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Similar or related”; the day after, Mini #326 (August 22, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Org. for retired folks (abbr.)”.