A mini crossword rewards a handful of habits more than a big vocabulary. The clues are short, the grid is small, and every answer crosses several others, so the way you read and the order you solve in matter more than any single word you know. New to the format? Start with how to play, which walks through a full puzzle, then come back here.
Where to start on a 5×5
The most common mistake is starting at 1-Across and working down the list. Clue order has nothing to do with difficulty. Instead, spend ten seconds reading all ten clues and pick the one you are surest about. That is your anchor.
- Fill-in-the-blank clues first. They are the easiest clues in almost every puzzle because there is usually only one word that completes the phrase.
- Prefer a full-width answer. On a 5×5 a five-letter answer touches all five answers going the other way. One of those in place puts a letter into every crossing clue.
- Then chase the letters. After your anchor, always move to the clue that has the most letters already filled in. Two known letters in a five-letter word usually leave only one or two candidates.
- Leave the obscure clue for last. A name you have never heard of is not a problem when the crossings have already written four of its five letters.
Read the clue's grammar
A crossword clue and its answer are interchangeable: you could swap one for the other in a sentence. That means the clue tells you the answer's form, not just its meaning.
Plurals
A plural clue wants a plural answer. “Sources of ruin” is BANES, “Valentine's Day flowers” is ROSES, and “Close buddies” is PALS. Most English plurals end in S, so a plural clue often lets you write an S in the last square before you know the word. Watch for irregular plurals, though: “Body parts you stand on” is FEET.
Tense
A past-tense clue wants a past-tense answer. “Intended” is MEANT, “Longed (for)” is PINED and “Pointed a gun (at)” is AIMED. When a clue ends in -ed, an -ED ending is a good bet, but irregular verbs break the pattern, as MEANT shows. The words in brackets are there to make the clue read naturally; they are not part of the answer.
Part of speech
An adjective clue wants an adjective. “Egg-shaped” is OVATE, “Wide-eyed and eager” is AGOG and “Graceful and supple, as a dancer” is LITHE. If your answer is a noun and the clue describes something, one of them is wrong.
Clue signals worth knowing
Crossword writers use a small set of conventions to tell you what kind of answer they want. Once you know them, they stop being tricks and start being help.
Blanks: ___
“___ Angeles” is LOS, “Per ___ (yearly)” is ANNUM, and “‘Remember the ___!’ (Texas rallying cry)” is ALAMO. Say the phrase out loud and the answer usually arrives on its own.
Short forms: “for short”, “briefly”, abbreviations
When the clue says the answer is shortened, it is. “Nine-digit ID, for short” is SSN and “Supply-and-demand subject, for short” is ECON. An abbreviation inside the clue is the same signal: “Sixty secs., for short” is MIN and “Baking amts. smaller than tablespoons” is TSPS. A clue that asks for “letters” wants an initialism: “Letters urging haste” is ASAP.
Register: “informally”, “slangily”, “in a text”
These words tell you the answer is casual language. “Movie, informally” is FLICK rather than FILM, “$100 bill, slangily” is CNOTE and “‘Wow!’ in a text” is OMG. A clue in quotation marks works the same way: it wants something a person would say. “‘Possibly, possibly not’” is MAYBE.
Other languages
A language named in the clue means the answer is in that language. “Spanish for ‘bull’” is TORO and “Italian grandma” is NONNA. These are almost always common, well-known words.
Examples: “e.g.” and “say”
When a clue gives an example, the answer is the category, not another example. “Iron or copper, e.g.” is METAL. A trailing “say” does the same job: “Push the button to leave a bad seat, say” describes one situation where you would EJECT.
Question marks
A question mark at the end of a clue means the writer is playing with words, so read it a second time for a pun or a second meaning. “Made a sheepish sound?” is BAAED: not embarrassed, but what a sheep says. “Average grade?” is CEE, the letter grade C spelled out. “Young hooter?” is OWLET. In a mini the wordplay is gentle, and the literal reading is usually the second one you try.
Learn the crosswordese
Some words appear in crosswords far more often than in conversation, because short words full of vowels fit into so many grids. Solvers call them crosswordese, and knowing them turns a stubborn corner into a two-second fill. In our own 5×5 library, ASAP has been an answer more often than any other word so far, clued as “Letters urging haste”, “Pronto, in an email” and “Right away, in an office memo”, among others. Some other regulars:
- OREO: “Cookie often twisted apart”
- AREA: “Region or zone”
- ALOE: “Soothing plant for sunburns”
- EEL: “Slippery fish”
- ERE: “Before, in poems”
You do not need to study a list. Play for a few weeks and these words will start to jump out at you. Notice how often the same answer comes back with a different clue; the answer is the thing worth remembering.
Make the crossings do the work
Every letter you place is a clue for another answer, so use them deliberately.
- Write in what you know, even if it is one letter. A plural S or a past-tense D at the end of a word is often certain before the rest of the word is. That single letter may be the start of a Down answer.
- Use pencil mode for guesses. Pencilled letters show in gray, so you can test a hunch against the crossings without forgetting which letters you are not sure about.
- Trust vowels and consonants. If a crossing gives you a letter pattern like _A_E, you can often think of the word faster from the shape than from the clue.
- Let the grid finish itself. On a 5×5 the last few answers are often complete before you read their clues. Read the clue anyway to make sure the word makes sense.
When to erase
A wrong answer is worse than an empty one, because it feeds bad letters into every clue that crosses it. Erase when:
- A crossing produces something that cannot be a word, such as three consonants in a row that no English word starts with. One of the two answers is wrong; the one you were less sure of is the one to clear.
- Two clues you are confident about disagree on a shared square. Reread both clues for a plural or a tense you might have missed.
- You have filled the grid and the board says some squares are wrong. The wrong squares are marked, so fix those and look again at every answer that crosses them.
The Clear menu can erase just the square, the whole word or the whole puzzle, so you never have to take out more than you mean to. Check is the gentler option: it marks wrong letters with a red slash and leaves everything in place.
Bigger grids: 6×6 and 7×7
The 6×6 has 12 answers and the 7×7 has 14 or 16, so they take longer, but the clues work the same way. On a 7×7 the black squares are often in the middle of the grid, not just the corners, and they split it into sections joined by only a few squares. Solve one section completely before moving on, and treat the squares that connect two sections as extra-valuable: a letter there helps both halves.
A checklist for when you are stuck
- Reread the clue and check the form: plural, past tense, adjective or noun.
- Look for a signal: a blank, “for short”, a language, “e.g.” or a question mark.
- Say the clue out loud as a sentence with the answer swapped in.
- Write in any letter you are sure of, such as a final S.
- Leave it and solve a crossing clue instead.
- Press Check to find out whether a letter you trust is actually wrong.
- Open that day's hints page and read one hint for the clue.
- Use Reveal on that one word, then carry on with the crossings it gives you.
Getting faster
Speed comes from not stopping. Keep the Skip filled squares and Jump to next clue settings on, which they are by default, so the cursor is always where you need it. Use Tab to move to the next clue and Enter to switch direction instead of reaching for the mouse. When a clue does not come in a couple of seconds, skip it; the crossings will bring you back with letters in hand. Your best times are saved in your browser, one for daily puzzles and one for Unlimited, so you can see yourself improve.