The August 13 edition of the New York Times Mini Crossword started off deceptively simple, but it had a few clues that could easily trip you up if you weren’t fully awake. Here’s a quick breakdown of the puzzle, clue by clue, along with the final answers.
One of the early sticking points was “Sailboat’s post”, which turned out to be MAST. It’s a classic crossword term, but in the heat of solving, it can slip the mind. Another tricky clue was “Official state of Alaska ___”, which required the answer MOOSE — a nod to Alaska’s well-known wildlife.
For the clue “T-shirt size”, the straightforward answer was SMALL. “Defeat, as a dragon” was cleverly clued as SLAY, and “Story time reader’s props” turned out to be MOMS, imagining parents reading to their kids.
The clue “There are roughly 10 billion of these in a grain of salt” was a scientific twist, leading to ATOMS. “Sandbank” brought the answer DUNE, while “Automaker named after Nikola” was, unsurprisingly, TESLA.
The puzzle wrapped up with the playful bumper-sticker style clue “My other car is a ___”, which was answered with YACHT.
Final Answer Grid:
- MAST
- MOOSE
- SMALL
- SLAY
- MOMS
- ATOMS
- DUNE
- TESLA
- YACHT
Despite a couple of moments of hesitation, this Mini was more about catching the small connections than deep wordplay. If you missed “mast” or “moose” on your first try, you definitely weren’t alone — those seemed to be the day’s real curveballs.
