About Mini #401
Mini #401 is the daily 5×5 for Thursday, November 5, 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 1-Across, “Every last one”, at three words; the longest is 2-Down, “Enter a password to access an account”, 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. For more ways in, see the solving tips.
How this grid compares
This layout appears in 37 of the 347 daily 5×5 puzzles in our library dated up to November 5, 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 (November 4, 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 November 5, 2026
Stuck? The hints for November 5, 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 #400 (November 4, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Shrub or hedge plant”; the day after, Mini #402 (November 6, 2026), opens with 1-Across, “Blow one's top, in a snit”.