Mini Crossword

A full-size crossword can take an afternoon. A mini takes a few minutes and teaches the same trick: you almost never solve a word from its clue alone. You solve it from its clue plus the letters other words have already given you.

Every puzzle here is a 5×5 grid, written for Arkedia, with eight to pick from. Each white square sits in both an Across and a Down answer, so every letter you place is checked twice.

How to play

The grid has white squares for letters and black squares that stay empty. Some white squares carry a small number. A number starts an Across answer if the word runs rightward from that square, a Down answer if it runs downward, or both.

Each clue gives its number and direction, like “4 Across”. Its answer fills the white squares from that number to the next black square or the edge of the grid. Answers are ordinary words and phrases, one letter per square, with no spaces or punctuation. When an Across answer crosses a Down answer, the shared square must hold a letter that works for both.

Clues come in a few flavours:

• Definitions. “Not asleep” is AWAKE.
• Fill in the blank. “Once ___ a time” wants the missing word: UPON.
• Double duty. “Place to keep money, or the side of a river” gives two meanings of one word: BANK.

A clue matches its answer’s form. A plural clue has a plural answer, and a past-tense clue has a past-tense answer.

The puzzle is solved when every white square holds the right letter. The timer starts with your first letter. Check strikes through wrong letters without fixing them. Reveal fills in the right letter or word and stamps the square with a corner mark. A solve that used Reveal still counts as solved, but only clean solves set a best time.

A worked example

Here is a grid that is not one of the eight, so nothing is spoiled.

Across: 1 Hats with peaks · 5 Spoken, not written · 6 Each and ___ · 7 Loaned · 8 Wear thin at the edges

Down: 1 Duvet, or a band’s take on someone else’s song · 2 Stadium · 3 Birthday celebration · 4 Crafty, like a fox · 6 Santa’s helper

1. Start with the sure thing. 3 Down, “Birthday celebration”, five letters: PARTY. It crosses every Across answer, so it seeds P, A, R, T and Y into five different words.
2. Cash in the crossings. 1 Across is now _ _ P _, hats with peaks: CAPS. 5 Across is _ _ A _, spoken not written: ORAL.
3. Follow the new letters down. 1 Down now starts C O, a duvet or a band’s version of a song: COVER. 2 Down starts A R, a stadium: ARENA. 4 Down starts S L, crafty: SLY.
4. The last row falls out. 6 Across reads _ V E R Y: EVERY. 7 Across is _ E N T, loaned: LENT. 8 Across is _ R A Y, wear thin: FRAY. And 6 Down, Santa’s helper, reads E-L-F down the left edge, confirming all three.

Notice how few clues were answered cold. PARTY was the only one. Every other word came at least partly from crossings.

Strategy

Take the gimmes first

Fill-in-the-blank clues and short answers are the easiest way in. A three-letter answer with one crossing letter usually has only a few candidates.

Pick the answer that crosses the most

When two clues feel equally sure, enter the one whose letters feed more unsolved words. A long Down that crosses every Across answer, like PARTY above, can crack the whole grid.

Let the pattern suggest the word

Stuck on a clue? Look at what you have, like _ E N T, and list words that fit: BENT, DENT, LENT, RENT, SENT, TENT. Then reread the clue. A pattern plus a clue is much stronger than either alone.

Match the clue’s grammar

“Takes a seat” is present tense and ends in S, so the answer probably does too: SITS, not SIT or SAT. This one habit prevents a lot of wrong entries.

Distrust a stuck corner

If a region will not fill, one of your entries there is probably wrong. Check the word you were least sure of before hammering at the others.

The idea underneath

A crossword is a constraint satisfaction problem. Each square is a variable that must take one letter. Each answer is a constraint: its squares must spell a word that fits the clue. Every square here sits in two constraints at once, which makes the grid tightly locked.

The numbers show why crossings are so powerful. There are 26⁵, about 11.9 million, ways to fill five squares with letters, yet only a few thousand of them are common English words. Take the roughly 2,800 five-letter words that Arkedia’s word-guess game accepts. Knowing one letter in a fixed position leaves about 230 of them on average. Knowing two, say the second and fourth, leaves about 27. The clue then only has to pick from a short list instead of thousands.

Solving well is the same strategy a computer uses: work on the most constrained answer first, spread each new letter to every word it touches, and back up when a contradiction shows you went wrong. The grids here were built that way, by a program that filled the most constrained slot first and backtracked from dead ends. Every clue was then written by hand.

Common mistakes

• Typing a guess and forgetting it. A wrong guess poisons its crossings. Use Check on a word when its crossings stop making sense.
• Ignoring direction. Clicking a selected square switches between Across and Down. Watch the clue bar above the grid to see which answer you are filling.
• Revealing too soon. One revealed letter often unlocks a whole word, so start with Reveal letter, not Reveal word.