About Mini #354
Mini #354 is the daily 5×5 for Saturday, September 19, 2026. Its grid has four black squares, laid out as side-by-side 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 8-Across, “Gentlemen”, at one word; the longest is 4-Down, “Read quickly, or remove from milk's surface”, at seven 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: 1-Across has only three letters. Some clues lean on a name or title, such as 7-Across, “Old Apple music players” and 1-Down, “Moses's brother in the Bible”; 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 29 of the 300 daily 5×5 puzzles in our library dated up to September 19, 2026. The layout is rotationally symmetric: turn the grid upside down and the black squares land in the same places. The day before (September 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 16 clues.
More for September 19, 2026
Stuck? The hints for September 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 #353 (September 18, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Black-and-white whale also called a killer whale”; the day after, Mini #355 (September 20, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Tool for chopping wood”.