Mini Crossword

A small grid, honestly made

Five by five, two black squares, ten entries. Small enough to finish over a coffee, which is the whole appeal of the format.

Both the grid and the clues are ours to give away. The fill is generated from a list of common English words, and each clue is a definition from a dictionary published in 1913 and long out of copyright. That is a real constraint on what this can be — a hand-built mini by a human setter is a better puzzle, with wordplay and misdirection and a theme — but it is honestly ours, and it is not a reprint of somebody else's work.

How to solve a small crossword

• Start where you are certain. One confident entry gives you a letter in every crossing entry, and in a five-by-five that is most of the puzzle.
• Do not fight a bad clue. Some of these definitions point at a sense of the word that has fallen out of use. When one reads like nonsense, skip it and let the crossings spell it for you.
• Use Check, not Reveal. Check tells you which letters are wrong without giving you the right ones, which keeps the puzzle worth finishing.

If you get properly stuck

The crossword solver takes a pattern — the letters you have, dots for the ones you do not — and lists every word that fits. It works on this grid the same as on any other, and it is often the fastest way to understand why a clue was pointing where it was.