How to play Mini Crossword

What you need

Nothing but a few spare minutes. On GamesBento the grid, the clues and a big letter keyboard are all on screen. On paper, a pencil (and an eraser) is all a crossword puzzle needs.

The aim

Fill every white square of the grid with a letter so that every across answer and every down answer matches its clue. In our mini crossword the grid is five squares by five, with a few black squares that separate the words.

How a crossword works

Each answer starts in a numbered square. The clue 1 Across is the answer that starts in square 1 and reads left to right; 1 Down starts in the same square and reads top to bottom. Most white squares belong to two answers, one across and one down, so they share a letter. That is the heart of every crossword: each word you find gives you letters for the words that cross it.

How to play here

• Tap a square to choose it. Its word is shaded and its clue appears in the clue bar above the grid.
• Tap it again (or press the Turn key, or Space) to switch between the across and the down word.
• Type with the on-screen keys or your keyboard. The cursor moves on by itself; when a word is full it jumps to the next word with a gap.
• Back takes a letter out. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move around the grid and Tab moves to the next clue.
• Tap a clue in the Across or Down list to jump straight to it. Clues you have filled in turn paler, so you can see what is left.

Tips for beginners

1. Do a first pass. Read through all the clues and fill in the ones you know at once. Even two or three answers give you a lot of crossing letters.
2. Start with fill-in-the-blanks. Clues like “Happily ___ after” are usually the quickest wins.
3. Count the squares. Knowing an answer has four letters often rules out half the words that come to mind.
4. Let the crossings guide you. If you have A B _ D _ for “Home, in old-fashioned speech”, the shape of the word does half the work.
5. Mind the tense and number. A clue in the past tense (“Sketched in pencil”) has an answer in the past tense (DREW). A plural clue has a plural answer.
6. Look for little jokes. A clue may play on a second meaning of a word: “Fourteen pounds” is a STONE, not a sum of money.
7. Don’t be afraid to guess. Type a likely word, then see whether its crossings agree. Checking a single square is a gentle way to test a guess.
8. Take a break. Coming back after a cup of tea often makes a stubborn clue suddenly obvious.

Check, Reveal and Clear

• Check a square, a word or the whole puzzle. Wrong letters are shown in red with a line through the square; right ones are shown in green with a small tick and can no longer change.
• Reveal a square, a word or the whole puzzle. Revealed letters are shown in blue with a small corner mark.
• Clear a word or the whole puzzle. Letters that were checked right or revealed stay where they are.

There is no shame in a little help: the puzzle still counts as solved. Your shared result shows a green square for each square you solved yourself and a yellow one for each square that was checked or revealed. Only today’s daily crossword, solved without Reveal, goes on the weekly leaderboard.

The daily crossword

There is a new free crossword every day, the same for everyone on the same date, and a puzzle will not come round again until every puzzle in our collection has had its day. Finish the daily on several days in a row to build a streak. After the daily, choose New puzzle and then Practice for another mini crossword from the collection.

Playing on paper

A mini crossword is easy to share at the kitchen table: draw a five-by-five grid, shade a few squares, write five across words that also make five down words, then write a clue for each. It is harder than it looks, which is half the fun.