The NYT Mini Crossword answers for Saturday, August 15, 2026: Across: COOPS, OHWOW, RINSE, DOGTAGS, OUTRO, ARIAL, LETBE; Down: CORD, OHIO, OWNGOAL, POSTURE, SWEATIT, GRAB, SOLE.
NYT Mini Crossword Hints – August 15, 2026
Hint 1: The seven-letter across anchor belongs to a category of small stamped metal plates worn on a bead chain, standard issue for members of the armed forces since the Civil War era.
Hint 2: One down answer is a soccer compound that names the worst thing a defender can do to their own team: a phrase you hope never follows your name in a match report.
Hint 3: One across answer names a widely installed sans-serif typeface developed in 1982 to match a more famous font’s character widths without reproducing its exact letterforms.
NYT Mini Crossword Answers – August 15, 2026
Across
1-Across: COOPS (“Stores owned and run by their workers”)
6-Across: OHWOW (“Huh, wasn’t expecting that!”)
7-Across: RINSE (“Run under a faucet”)
8-Across: DOGTAGS (“Metal identifiers in the military”)
11-Across: OUTRO (“Bit of music that plays as a podcast ends”)
12-Across: ARIAL (“Font similar to Helvetica”)
13-Across: LETBE (“Leave alone”)
Down
1-Down: CORD (“Cut the ___ (cancel cable)”)
2-Down: OHIO (“Dayton’s state”)
3-Down: OWNGOAL (“Game-changing mistake for a World Cup defender”)
4-Down: POSTURE (“Slouching is a bad form of this”)
5-Down: SWEATIT (“Worry about the small stuff”)
9-Down: GRAB (“Snatch”)
10-Down: SOLE (“___ Survivor, title for each winner of ‘Survivor'”)
Notable Entries
DOGTAGS is the seven-letter anchor spanning the center. Military identification tags (stamped metal plates worn on a bead chain) have been standard issue in the US armed forces since the Civil War era, though the informal name came into wide use during World War I. The clue strips the concept to its essentials: metal identifiers, military context, seven letters.
OWNGOAL names a football compound that solvers might resist writing as one word. In association football, an own goal occurs when a defending player sends the ball into their own net. A World Cup setting raises the stakes considerably: the moment gets replayed on a global broadcast loop for years. Spelled as one word for the crossword, OWNGOAL looks unfamiliar on paper even when the concept resolves immediately.
ARIAL, clued as “Font similar to Helvetica,” understates a long typographic dispute. The typeface was designed in 1982 to match Helvetica’s character widths exactly, so documents formatted in one could be substituted with the other without reflowing text. Microsoft bundled ARIAL with Windows, making it one of the most widely installed fonts in computing history. At most screen sizes, the two typefaces are visually indistinguishable.
COOPS lands on two registers: worker-owned cooperatives, as the clue specifies, and the poultry enclosure meaning the clue omits entirely. The crossing letters confirm the plural S before the semantic question fully settles.
For the full grid from Friday, see the NYT Mini Crossword answers for August 14, 2026, which featured MOBS, MONEY, OCEAN, SHORE, SAND across.
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