The NYT Mini Crossword answers for Wednesday, July 15, 2026, are below.
Across
1A: “___ shrimp (classic oxymoron)” – JUMBO
6A: “Love, to a Frenchman” – AMOUR
7A: “Tale from Aesop” – FABLE
8A: “Friend, to a Spaniard” – AMIGO
9A: “Provokes, with ‘up'” – RILES
Down
1D: “Disney villain between Gaston and Scar” – JAFAR
2D: “The so-called ‘fifth taste'” – UMAMI
3D: “Gas brand that merged with Exxon” – MOBIL
4D: “Stick out noticeably” – BULGE
5D: “Milkshake mix-ins that might get stuck in your straw” – OREOS
The 1D clue is the day’s most elegant construction. JAFAR – the sorcerer-vizier villain of Disney’s Aladdin – is placed chronologically between Gaston (Beauty and the Beast, 1991) and Scar (The Lion King, 1994). Aladdin was released in 1992, which means the clue is placing three Disney villains in order of their films’ release years rather than any ranking of menace or memorability. It is a trivia clue dressed as a logic puzzle, and it rewards solvers who know their Disney release calendar rather than their Disney villain hierarchy.
JUMBO shrimp is the grammar classroom’s favourite oxymoron – two words that appear to contradict each other because jumbo means very large and shrimp originally meant very small. In practice, “jumbo shrimp” is simply a product category, and the contradiction has been so thoroughly normalised by commercial use that most people do not register it as paradoxical. The clue leans into the rhetorical label rather than the product, which gives solvers a language-class nudge toward a very common answer.
UMAMI – the fifth taste alongside sweet, sour, salty, and bitter – was formalised by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda in 1908 and entered mainstream Western food writing only in the last two decades. The word is Japanese and translates roughly as “pleasant savoury taste.” Glutamate is its chemical carrier; aged cheeses, soy sauce, tomatoes, and mushrooms are its most cited sources.
Today’s Wordle #1852 answer for July 15, 2026 is PSHAW. Yesterday’s NYT Mini Crossword for July 14, 2026 had EASY, SLICE, CORES, OPEN, TEST across. The Mini resets at midnight ET (10 pm PT).
