NEW YORK — The NYT Mini Crossword for July 22, 2026 is solved. All ten clues are answered below – scroll down for the full grid or look up individual entries above the reveal.
Today’s puzzle has a hidden theme hiding in plain sight. The answer to 5-Across – DANDY, clued as “just peachy” – doubles as a hint: D and Y are the two letters that appear most often in this grid. Once you see it, you can trace the pattern through HANDY, EDDY, LADY, AIDY, and DRY. The constructor built the whole puzzle around those two letters.
NYT Mini Crossword Hints for July 22, 2026
Hint for 1-Across: She’s in charge of the henhouse.
Hint for 4-Across: Think “first ___” or “leading ___” – a title of distinction.
Hint for 5-Across: Another word for excellent, and also a clue about the grid itself.
Hint for 6-Across: She played multiple characters on “Saturday Night Live” for years.
Hint for 7-Across: What your chicken gets when you leave it in the oven too long.
NYT Mini Crossword Answers for July 22, 2026
Across
1-Across – “Mother chicken”: HEN
4-Across – “Word after ‘leading’ and ‘first'”: LADY
5-Across – “Just peachy … or a hint to the two letters that appear most often in this grid”: DANDY
6-Across – “Bryant of ‘S.N.L.’ fame”: AIDY
7-Across – “Like overcooked chicken”: DRY
Down
1-Down – “Helpful”: HANDY
2-Down – “Swirl of water”: EDDY
3-Down – “The Yankees, on scoreboards”: NYY
4-Down – “Supervillain’s hideout”: LAIR
5-Down – “___ joke”: DAD
The chicken theme running through 1-Across (HEN) and 7-Across (DRY) feels incidental rather than intentional – the real architecture here is the D-and-Y constraint. AIDY Bryant is the SNL alumna best known for her recurring characters, including Judge Janine Pirro and various sketch staples during her 2012-2022 run. NYY is the standard scoreboard abbreviation for the New York Yankees, the kind of three-letter entry that crossword constructors reach for when a corner needs filling.
For more of today’s NYT puzzles, the NYT Connections answers for July 22, 2026 and Wordle answer for July 22, 2026 are both live.
