The NYT Mini Crossword answers today, for Saturday, August 22, 2026, are DIVES IN, ORIGAMI, HANGMAN, YUM, MAJORED, EYELASH and WET KISS across, with DOH, IRA, VIN, EGG YOLK, SAMURAI, I’M A MESS, NIN, MEW, AYE, JET and DHS down.
One thing to know before you start. Saturday is the day The Mini stretches to a 7×7 grid rather than the usual 5×5, and today’s is a full one, seven squares wide and seven deep with only four black squares in the entire puzzle. Several answer pages are still describing it as 5×5. It is not.
NYT Mini Crossword Hints for August 22, 2026
- 1-Across is what you do when you skip the small talk entirely.
- 8-Across is a Japanese compound that translates literally as folding paper.
- 9-Across is clued as “_a_er and _encil game”, and the missing letters are the whole joke.
- 4-Down is the part of a fried egg that the phrase sunny side up is named for.
- 6-Down is what you text someone when you cancel on them for the third time.
NYT Mini Crossword Answers Today, August 22, 2026: Across
1-Across, “Gets right down to business”: DIVES IN
8-Across, “Japanese for ‘folding paper'”: ORIGAMI
9-Across, “_a_er and _encil game”: HANGMAN
10-Across, “Dee-lish!”: YUM
11-Across, “Specialized (in), as in college”: MAJORED
15-Across, “Small hair on which mascara is applied”: EYELASH
16-Across, “Sloppy smooch”: WET KISS
NYT Mini Crossword Answers Today, August 22, 2026: Down
1-Down, “Homer Simpson’s shout”: DOH
2-Down, “Roth ___”: IRA
3-Down, “Actor Diesel of the ‘Fast & Furious’ films”: VIN
4-Down, “‘Sunny’ part of a breakfast order”: EGG YOLK
5-Down, “Warrior with a katana”: SAMURAI
6-Down, “‘Sorry, my life is all over the place right now'”: I’M A MESS
7-Down, “Trent Reznor’s rock band, to fans”: NIN
11-Down, “Call from a kitten”: MEW
12-Down, “Sailor’s assent”: AYE
13-Down, “F-16 Fighting Falcon, e.g.”: JET
14-Down, “Nonfielding baseball players, for short”: DHS
The Clue That Plays Its Own Game
9-Across reads “_a_er and _encil game”. Blank the P’s out of paper and pencil and what you are looking at is a round of hangman, which is also the answer. The Mini can only make that joke once, and it lands.
The construction underneath is quieter and better. Three seven-letter answers, EGG YOLK, SAMURAI and I’M A MESS, run the full depth of the grid down columns four, five and six. Read their fourth letters straight across and you get Y, U, M, which is 10-Across, the only entry in the fourth row. Those three long downs are holding the middle of the puzzle up by themselves.
One correction is worth flagging, because it is circulating. At least one widely read answers page lists 1-Across as DIVESINS, eight letters. The slot is seven squares wide, and the letter in column seven is fixed as the N at the top of NIN. The answer is DIVES IN.
Today’s other puzzles are solved as well. The Wordle answer today is #1890, Connections #1168 hides a fourth kind of water, and the Strands spangram for #902 runs to thirteen letters.
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