Sunday’s NYT Mini Crossword is live, and today’s 5×5 grid is running at a mid-week difficulty level that catches a fair number of solvers in the middle sections. If you are chasing a streak, protecting a personal best, or simply ran short on time before the daily reset at 10 p.m. Eastern, every verified answer for June 14, 2026, is laid out below. Scroll carefully if you only want a hint. The full solutions appear clearly marked further down.
The NYT Mini Crossword resets at 10 p.m. Eastern on weeknights and Saturdays. Sunday’s edition becomes available slightly earlier, at 6 p.m. Eastern, which means today’s puzzle has been live since Saturday evening. The five-by-five grid holds ten clues in total, five across and five down, with shared letters at every intersection. Speed comes from recognizing those crossings early and planting your most confident answers first.
Hints for the NYT Mini Crossword: June 14, 2026
These are directional hints only. The answers do not appear until the next section.
Across Hints
1 Across: Energy in one’s step. Think of what you say when someone seems particularly animated this morning. The answer ends with the letter P.
4 Across: S, for a tee. This clue is asking for a clothing size written out in full. The answer starts with S.
6 Across: Philosophical idea of “What goes around comes back around.” This one lands squarely in Eastern philosophy and has crossed into everyday Western usage over the past several decades. The answer starts with K.
7 Across: “Oh, you wanna go! Let’s go!” This is a casual expression of readiness for a confrontation. The answer ends with N.
8 Across: What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? This clue has a trick at its heart. Think carefully about how both names are written, specifically the article preceding each one. The answer starts with T.
Down Hints
1 Down: Break down grammatically. A term you likely encountered in school when identifying the parts of a sentence. The answer starts with P.
2 Down: Favorite Muppet of little kids. The small red resident of Sesame Street. The answer ends with O.
3 Down: Blueprint. A word for a plan or diagram before construction begins. The answer starts with P.
4 Down: Short comedic sketch. Think of the kind of five-minute performance you might see on a variety show or a late-night stage. The answer starts with S.
5 Down: 70-minute section of the SAT. One of the two major subjects tested in the college entrance exam. The answer ends with H.
NYT Mini Crossword Answers for June 14, 2026
Full solutions are below. Everything from this point onward is a spoiler.
Across Answers
1 Across: Energy in one’s step – PEP
A three-letter burst of energy that crossword editors reach for often. PEP fills the top-left corner and intersects both 1 Down and 2 Down, making it an ideal starting point for solvers who want to open the grid quickly. If you pulled this one on instinct, you likely had the northwest locked within seconds.
4 Across: S, for a tee – SMALL
The clue is referring to the size label printed on a t-shirt tag. S stands for SMALL. Straightforward once the wordplay resolves, but the phrasing is compact enough to cause a half-second pause for solvers moving at speed. SMALL runs across the second row and crosses 4 Down at the S.
6 Across: Philosophical idea of “What goes around comes back around” – KARMA
KARMA is rooted in ancient Indian religious thought. The concept, drawn from the Sanskrit word karman, meaning action or deed, holds that one’s deeds generate corresponding consequences across the arc of a life, or across multiple lifetimes in traditions that include rebirth. In everyday English usage, it has been simplified into the idea that good behavior returns good outcomes and harmful behavior does the same in reverse. KARMA sits in the fourth row and is the puzzle’s richest clue by a wide margin.
7 Across: “Oh, you wanna go! Let’s go!” – ITSON
IT’S ON is a colloquial expression signaling that a challenge or confrontation is imminent and accepted. The constructor runs the two words together as ITSON, a common Mini Crossword convention. Five letters, conversational in register, and likely resolved in one pass for most experienced players.
8 Across: What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common? – THE
This is the puzzle’s cleverest construction. Alexander the Great and A.A. Milne’s 1926 collection Winnie-the-Pooh both share a defining article embedded directly in the name itself: THE. It is not a descriptor added by other people but a fixed part of each name as written. The clue works precisely because it invites solvers to look for historical facts or fictional traits shared between a Macedonian general and a fictional honey-loving bear, when the actual connection is purely typographical. THE fills the fifth row and wraps the puzzle.
Down Answers
1 Down: Break down grammatically – PARSE
To PARSE a sentence is to identify the grammatical function of each word within it. The term comes from the Latin pars orationis, meaning part of speech. In the Mini grid, PARSE runs vertically from the P in PEP and links the top of the puzzle to the KARMA row below.
2 Down: Favorite Muppet of little kids – ELMO
ELMO is the red, high-pitched Muppet who has anchored Sesame Street’s youngest demographic since his rise to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. The character now leads his own segment, Elmo’s World, and remains one of the most recognizable figures in children’s television. ELMO drops from the E in PEP and resolves cleanly on every crossing.
3 Down: Blueprint – PLAN
Compact and unambiguous. A PLAN is a blueprint, a scheme, a diagram of intent before action begins. Four letters, familiar in the extreme, and valuable in the grid precisely because it locks down the third column. PLAN confirms the L in SMALL and the A in KARMA simultaneously.
4 Down: Short comedic sketch – SKIT
A SKIT is a brief, often improvised comedic piece performed on a stage, variety program, or online. The clue is direct, the answer is familiar, and SKIT opens the fourth column while anchoring the S in SMALL at the top. Saturday Night Live built its forty-plus-year brand on the format.
5 Down: 70-minute section of the SAT – MATH
The SAT features a dedicated MATH section that runs seventy minutes and tests algebra, problem-solving, and data analysis. MATH drops from the M in SMALL and locks the T in ITSON, forming the critical right-side crossing that makes the bottom half of the grid fall into place.
Difficulty and Speed Notes
Sunday’s NYT mini crossword sits at mid-week difficulty, a shade harder than a typical Monday or Tuesday but well short of the friction that characterizes the Saturday expanded grid. Yesterday’s puzzle, covered in the June 13 Mini Crossword breakdown, ran on a larger Saturday board with a hidden team-sports theme threaded across three answers. Today’s grid returns to the standard 5×5 and dispenses with a formal theme entirely.
The fastest route through today’s puzzle is to drop ELMO at 2 Down immediately after solving PEP, then use the E to confirm ELMO and build downward. PLAN at 3 Down is a two-second fill once the P from PARSE lands. From there, the A in PLAN confirms KARMA’s second letter and the puzzle cascades to completion. Most experienced solvers will clear this grid in under ninety seconds.
A few solvers may pause at 8 Across. The instinct is to search for something Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh genuinely share in terms of history or story. The answer only clicks when you step back and look at both names as written text rather than as historical or fictional identities. Once it clicks, it clicks hard, and it is the kind of clue that makes the Mini Crossword NYT worth returning to every day.
About the NYT Mini Crossword
The mini crossword NYT runs on a 5×5 grid, compared to the full daily crossword’s 15×15 weekday board and the Sunday edition’s 21×21. It is free to play on the New York Times website and through the NYT Games app on iOS and Android. The puzzle resets at 10 p.m. Eastern on weeknights and Saturdays, with Sunday’s edition going live at 6 p.m. Eastern. A built-in timer lets players track their solve speed and share results, and archived puzzles are available to NYT Games subscribers.
If you enjoy the daily ritual of the mini crossword, the NYT Games platform pairs it well with Wordle, which resets at midnight. The most recent Wordle breakdown covers Puzzle #1818, a short-tempered five-letter adjective that caught thousands of players before the grid resolved. For solvers who prefer a larger challenge after the Mini, the NYT Connections puzzle for June 11 is analyzed in full, with all four category solutions and a detailed breakdown of the word grid’s misdirections.
The Mini Crossword was introduced as a compact companion to the full New York Times Crossword and has grown into one of the most-played daily word games in the world. Its five-by-five format delivers the cognitive satisfaction of a completed crossword in a fraction of the time, which is precisely why millions of players make it the first ritual of their morning.
