That's solving! Every morning I get to feel like Frasier, if only for 40 seconds. This may be why the NYTimes Mini plays a little jingle when you finish it - a jingle that inevitably calls to mind the intro music to Frasier. To put it another way, smart-arses are good at crosswords. The solver who can do a whole crossword during a commute and leave the paper with the grid filled for the next person to pick up and wonder at is clearly not a person to be messed with. The dream of crosswords is a dream of precision and clarity and intelligence. Even a bad day clocks in at 1.48, and I am thick, remember, so imagine what you can do! On rare occasions a bit of US lingo will upset things, but then you can slice and dice from row to column. You can whack on autocheck and get going and, on a good day, I will have the whole thing wrapped up in 40 seconds or so. This is the crossword as something to set your day in motion - five simple clues across and five down. It can be a bit daunting, coming from English crosswords, to see a grid in which almost every square is ready to receive a letter.ĭo not be daunted. The Mini, edited since its inception by Joel Fagliano, is a US joint for starters, so cryptic clues - a definition joined in a dainty muddle with a bit of wordplay - are out, although very occasionally a cryptic-like pun, with its familiar pincer movement feel, will turn up anyway. If the Listener is at one end of the crosswords scale, the NYTimes Mini is at the other. That's a weekend right there, but quite a good weekend. ![]() The Listener, for example, is a cryptic so astonishingly challenging that a past example required solvers to finish the grid, cut it up into Tetris pieces, and then fashion them into a wall. ![]() If I have a whole day at my disposal I can just about get a Rufus cryptic finished, albeit with a little cheating, and I love to read about the form's strangest variants. I love crosswords, by which I mean that I love the idea of them. This second fact means that they have both cropped up in the New York Times' Mini Crossword - a gem-like 5x5 treat that pops up online every morning and can be played for free. It’s so clearly designed as a mere loss leader for the actual crossword that finishing it has the exact opposite effect that a good puzzle should have-it’s less a tiny surge of accomplishment than the sense that you’ve wasted an entire minute of your time.Two things that Trump and Obama have in common: they have both been President of the United States, and they both have five letters in their last names. The Mini, though, is a four-letter word for “Are you kidding me?” It doesn’t tickle your mind so much as punch you in the brain with its blatancy. In a good crossword-even an easy one-the answers manage to feel inevitable but still just sideways enough to flatter your own ingenuity. One of the most satisfying things about doing the Times puzzle every day is the rhythm of progressing from breeziness to arduousness over the course of the week. The latter is a neat misdirection, first seeming to hint at royalty or perhaps something biblical, while “LeBron’s sport, informally” challenges you only to come up with a shorter way to type “basketball.” But compare the leaden directness of the Mini clue “LeBron’s sport, informally” to some of James’ other appearances in the main puzzle-for instance, “Org. They’re perfectly suited to the digital age, and the fact that the Times can charge $40 a year for them-even subscribers to the digital paper don’t get them for free-indicates they are still thriving. Of course, crossword puzzles, including the Times’ still-dominant version, aren’t moribund. In fact, I might go so far as to say that it’s a disgrace to the NYT crossword brand. ![]() ![]() A 5×5 puzzle edited by Joel Fagliano, The Mini is a sensational. If the Mini gets you interested in filling out a grid of intersecting words based on clues, great, but it bears very little relation to the Times puzzle itself. This page will be updated every single day with the latest NYT Mini Crossword Puzzle Answers. ( People’s crossword puzzle: “NCIS: _ Angeles.” The Mini: “Treat for an early bird.”) Unlike the regular puzzle, it’s free to play-picture the heroin sample dealers offer to get people hooked, only instead of heroin, it’s a thimbleful of skim milk. The Mini, by contrast, is the People magazine crossword puzzle of the New York Times. The New York Times crossword puzzle, which has appeared daily since 1950, has earned its reputation as THE crossword puzzle: challenging yet accessible, with a good mix of trivia and wordplay. Recent clues and answers, for example, included: Unlike the regular puzzle, it requires not even a single minute for a competent solver to complete, let alone a single brain cell. Like the regular puzzle, there’s a new one every day. And then there’s the “Mini.” The Mini is a five-by-five grid, promoted on the app’s home screen and online.
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