The NYT Mini Crossword for Wednesday, August 12, 2026 features a Caitlin Clark reference at 1-Across, a Trojan War misdirection at 5-Across, and a cleverly worded clue for BROKE that earns a second look. All answers and clues are below.
NYT Mini Crossword Across Answers – August 12, 2026
1-Across: Caitlin Clark’s league, for short – WNBA
5-Across: Odysseus’s hiding places when entering the city of Troy – HORSE
7-Across: Hawaiian “hi” – ALOHA
8-Across: Personal opinions, in modern parlance – TAKES
9-Across: Where a nuthatch hatches – NEST
NYT Mini Crossword Down Answers – August 12, 2026
1-Down: “Come again?” – WHAT
2-Down: Hall-of-Fame pitcher ___ – NOLAN
3-Down: Unloaded? – BROKE
4-Down: What a phoenix rises from – ASHES
6-Down: The “E” of NE – EAST
Three clues stand out today. The 5-Across clue – “Odysseus’s hiding places when entering the city of Troy” – uses the plural to nudge solvers toward the soldiers concealed inside the horse rather than the horse itself, a layer of misdirection that makes HORSE land as both a surprise and a logical inevitability. The 2-Down clue, “Hall-of-Fame pitcher ___”, points to Nolan Ryan, whose first name alone is distinctive enough to serve as an answer without further context. And 3-Down, clued as “Unloaded?”, earns its question mark: BROKE in the sense of having no money, reads as having been unloaded of funds, a lateral connection that works better once the crossing letters are already in place than it does as a cold solve.
Yesterday’s grid is in the NYT Mini Crossword answers for August 11, 2026, which featured BACNE at 1-Down as the puzzle’s most talked-about entry.
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