About Mini #389
Mini #389 is the daily 5×5 for Saturday, October 24, 2026. Its grid has four black squares, laid out as single squares in all four corners, which leaves 21 white squares for ten answers: five Across and five Down. By length, that's six five-letter and four three-letter answers.
The shortest clue is 6-Across, “Playground chute”, at two words; the longest is 4-Across, “Deserve, or a gold star's reward”, at six 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 2-Down, “Woman's name, a variant of Erica”; 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 36 of the 335 daily 5×5 puzzles in our library dated up to October 24, 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 (October 23, 2026), which had two.
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 October 24, 2026
Stuck? The hints for October 24, 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 #388 (October 23, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “In the middle of”.