The NYT Mini Crossword answers for Saturday, July 18, 2026, are below, with the full Across and Down solutions.
Across
1A – 24 cans of beer: CASE
5A – ⬆ or ⬇: ARROW
6A – Cold spike?: ICICLE
7A – Dance steps after “Right foot, let’s stomp! Left foot, let’s stomp!”: CHACHA
8A – Cybersecurity menace: HACKER
9A – Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, etc.: IVIES
10A – “Cool!”: NEAT
Down
1D – A sport, or an insect: CRICKET
2D – Parts of the McDonald’s logo: ARCHES
3D – Renewable energy option: SOLAR
4D – Female sheep: EWES
5D – Thorny tree that’s a favorite of giraffes: ACACIA
6D – “___ my reasons …”: IHAVE
7D – Place for hair in “The Three Little Pigs”: CHIN
The standout clue in Saturday’s puzzle is 6-Across. “Cold spike?” is a clean piece of wordplay: an icicle is, precisely, a spike formed from frozen water, and the question mark signals that the surface reading is doing double duty. ICICLE is one of the longer fills in today’s grid and among the most satisfying.
1-Down carries two meanings at once: CRICKET is both a bat-and-ball sport played across the British Commonwealth and the chirping insect whose stridulation soundtracks summer evenings. The clue offers no additional disambiguation, leaving both readings valid until crossing letters settle it. 7-Across is similarly layered. The CHACHA steps trace back to DJ Casper’s Cha-Cha Slide, in which “right foot, let’s stomp” is the literal cue. The answer lands as a dance genre, but the clue writer picked the lyric that makes the connection unmistakable.
7-Down – “Place for hair in ‘The Three Little Pigs’” – points to CHIN, a nod to the wolf’s famous demand answered by “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.” The line is close enough to universally known that the puzzle relies on it without further cluing; CHIN lands immediately once the crossings are in place.
Today’s Wordle #1855 answer for July 18, 2026 is BOOTH. The NYT Connections #1133 answers for July 18 and the NYT Strands #867 answers for July 18 are also live. The Mini resets at midnight ET (10 p.m. PT).
