The NYT Mini Crossword answers today, for Tuesday, August 25, 2026, are GENX, FEDEX, INDEX, ARID and TEE across, and GENRE, EDDIE, NEED, XXX and FIAT down.
There is a joke built into this grid and it is a visual one. The right-hand column reads X, X, X from top to bottom, which is exactly what 4D asks for, and the three across answers running through it all finish on the same letter.
Mini Crossword Answers Today, August 25, 2026: Across
- 1A Cohort born between 1965 and 1980, for short – GENX
- 5A Shipping giant with a purple-and-orange logo – FEDEX
- 6A Section at the end of a textbook – INDEX
- 7A Dry, as the desert – ARID
- 8A “___ it high and let it fly” (golfer’s mantra) – TEE
Mini Crossword Answers Today, August 25, 2026: Down
- 1D Pop, rock or jazz – GENRE
- 2D Comedian Murphy – EDDIE
- 3D Requirement – NEED
- 4D Winning line in tic-tac-toe – XXX
- 5D Italy’s largest automaker – FIAT
The Full Grid
| 1G | 2E | 3N | 4X | |
| 5F | E | D | E | X |
| 6I | N | D | E | X |
| 7A | R | I | D | |
| 8T | E | E |
Four black squares, twenty-one letters, and they sit in a staircase down the bottom right that leaves the top three rows almost solid. That is what makes the grid feel bigger than a normal Tuesday even though the board is the usual 5×5.
Where to Start Today: 4D
XXX. The clue is “Winning line in tic-tac-toe”, the answer is three crosses in a row, and the answer is also literally what the column looks like once it is filled. It is the best clue in the puzzle and it is also the fastest way in, because it hands you the last letter of 1A, 5A and 6A in one move.
An X ending is worth more than most letters. Very little in English finishes on one, so once the right-hand column is in place, the field of candidates for those three acrosses collapses almost immediately. GENX, FEDEX and INDEX are close to the only common answers of those lengths that fit.
The Two That Will Cost You Time
1A is the first of them, and the problem is not the fact but the spelling. Everyone knows the cohort born between 1965 and 1980 is Generation X. Almost nobody writes it GENX, without a space and without a hyphen, and a solver holding G, E, N and a terminal X can stare at four correct squares without recognising them.
5D is the other. FIAT is a carmaker in this clue and a Latin verb everywhere else, and the crossword habit of clueing it as a decree by fiat is strong enough that the Italian reading takes a beat. The company has been part of the Stellantis group since 2021, but the brand is still Turin’s and still the answer.
8A is a gift by comparison, once you hear it. “Tee it high and let it fly” is a golfer’s saying about driving off the tee rather than a crossword construction, and three letters starting with T is not a wide field.
Is the Mini Hard Today?
Easy, with one sticking point. Nine of the ten answers are things a solver either knows instantly or does not know at all, which is the profile of a fast Mini, and the only real resistance is in reading GENX as a single word.
What nobody can give you is a benchmark. The New York Times publishes no par time and no difficulty rating for the Mini, and it does not grade the small puzzle by weekday the way it grades the full crossword. Calling a Tuesday Mini easy is a judgment about the clues, not a measurement.
Yesterday’s Mini Crossword answers ran on a board with a single black square in it, the opposite arrangement to today’s staircase.
Today’s other puzzles: Wordle #1893, Connections #1171 and Strands #905.
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