Play today's mini crossword free — a quick 5×5 (7×7 on weekends), edited by Jeff Chen, constructor of 150+ NYT crosswords. No account, no paywall. Track your streak.
Free forever. No account, no paywall. A fresh mini every day — a quick 5×5 most days, a 7×7 on weekends — hand-crafted and edited by Jeff Chen, constructor of 150+ New York Times crosswords.
Welcome to minicrossword.com — the free daily mini crossword you can finish on a coffee break. A compact grid, a handful of across and down clues, and a streak worth protecting. No signup, no subscription, no "you've hit your limit." Just open it and solve.
The mini crossword is a compact crossword — usually a 5×5 grid — built to be solved in a minute or two rather than an afternoon. Same across-and-down mechanic as the full-size puzzle, none of the obscure-trivia gauntlet. It's the on-ramp: all the fun of the crossword, in the time it takes your coffee to cool. The format was popularized by The New York Times; minicrossword.com offers a free, unlimited version anyone can play without an account.
Like the crosswords you grew up on, the mini gets tougher as the week goes on — Monday's a gentle start and the weekend bites hardest. Most days the grid is a compact 5×5; on Saturdays and Sundays it can open up to a 7×7.
So Monday's a soft landing and Sunday's a proper sit-down. Come back daily and you'll feel the rhythm — which is rather the point of a daily habit. Want a tougher one any day of the week? There's a Daily Hard mini too, and once you've solved both, Unlimited and the Archive have you covered.
Fill every square so each across and down clue is answered correctly. Click a square and type; click again to switch between across and down. A wrong letter just won't check — there's no penalty for experimenting, so guess freely and lean on your crossings.
Every daily mini on this site — the Daily Easy and the Daily Hard — is edited by Jeff Chen, a crossword constructor with 150+ puzzles published in The New York Times, plus hundreds more in the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and beyond. For a decade he wrote the daily NYT-puzzle analysis at XWord Info; he edits the Sunday crossword at Andrews McMeel Universal; and he's mentored dozens of constructors into their first NYT byline. Will Shortz has called his puzzles "ingenious."
Most free minis are spit out by an algorithm. Yours are built by a human who's spent a career on exactly this craft — cleaner fill, fairer clues, an "aha" that actually lands. More about Jeff.
(Unlimited puzzles are auto-generated for infinite practice; a Chen-edited Unlimited filter is on the way. For now his hands are on the two dailies — which is what makes them worth coming back for.)
A few quick wins to start solving faster:
Yes — free forever. No subscription, no paywall, no daily limit. A fresh daily mini, a hard mini, and unlimited practice puzzles, all free. The past 7 days of daily puzzles are open to everyone; a free account unlocks the full archive.
No — play instantly, no signup, and the past 7 days of daily puzzles are open too. Your stats and streak save locally, but local storage is per-browser and can slip if you switch devices or clear your data. A free account (just an email and password, or Google sign-in) keeps them reliable and synced — and unlocks the full daily archive, every puzzle back to day one, not just the last week. Free to play either way; the account adds durability and history, never access.
New solvers, a few minutes; regulars, around a minute; speed-solvers, under 30 seconds. There's no “should” — the only benchmark that matters is your own yesterday.
Most days, yes. On weekends — Saturday and Sunday — the grid can open up to a 7×7. And the difficulty builds as the week goes on, with Monday the gentlest and the weekend the toughest.
Yes — there's a Daily Easy mini and a Daily Hard mini each day, plus Unlimited for infinite practice and an Archive of past puzzles (the last 7 days free, the full run with a free account).
This is one. minicrossword.com is a free, unlimited, no-account mini crossword, with daily puzzles edited by celebrated NYT constructor Jeff Chen.
Jeff Chen, constructor of 150+ New York Times crosswords, edits both daily minis — the Daily Easy and the Daily Hard.
We're Hey, Good Game — a small studio that builds and buys brainy games, for good. We think a daily puzzle can be a genuinely healthy habit, and we're set on making the best free version of one. Learn more about us.
minicrossword.com is not affiliated with The New York Times or its games.