Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Friday, August 22nd

We’ve come to the end of the road. This is my last NYT Mini Guide for the next couple of weeks. I pass the baton to my colleagues, Kris Holt and Paul Tassi, who will guide you along your crossword path until I return. Let’s dive right in!

Looking for yesterday’s NYT Mini Crossword? Check out our hints and answers right here.

The NYT Mini is a smaller, quicker, more digestible, bite-sized version of the larger and more challenging NYT Crossword, and unlike its larger sibling, it’s free-to-play without a subscription to The New York Times. You can play it on the web or the app, though you’ll need the app to tackle the archive.

Spoilers ahead!

How To Solve Today’s Mini Crossword

Hints and Clues

We’ll start with some extra clues:

The extra clue today is this: The “circled” boxes spell out the pieces used in the new NYT game Pips, which you can read about here.

Before we get to the answers, here’s the first letter for each word in today’s Mini.

Across

1A. Places to store shovels and leaf blowers → Ss

5A. Coating for Babybel cheese → W

6A. “___ vs. Predator” (2004 sci-fi film) → A

8A. Streaming glitch → L

9A. Docking spots → P

10A. Feature of a Southern accent → T

14A. Sweet potato lookalike → Y

15A. Top-notch, informally → P

17A. Greenskeeper’s roll of grass → S

18A. Campfire remnants → A

Down

1D. Nickname for the Florida Gators football stadium, with “the” → S

2D. “2001: A Space Odyssey” villain → H

3D. Cast out from a country → E

4D. “Uptown Funk” and “Downtown,” for two → S

7D. “Can I bend your ___ for a second?” → E

10D. Like an ambitious, competitive personality → T

11D. Simple-to-play card game for two → W

12D. Simple-living sect → A

13D. Shop owner’s stock → G

16D. Barkeep on “The Simpsons” → M

Okay, onto the answers! Remember, spoilers ahead!

Across:

1A. Places to store shovels and leaf blowers → SHEDS

5A. Coating for Babybel cheese → WAX

6A. “___ vs. Predator” (2004 sci-fi film) → ALIEN

8A. Streaming glitch → LAG

9A. Docking spots → PIERS

10A. Feature of a Southern accent → TWANG

14A. Sweet potato lookalike → YAM

15A. Top-notch, informally → PRIMO

17A. Greenskeeper’s roll of grass → SOD

18A. Campfire remnants → ASHES

Down:

1D. Nickname for the Florida Gators football stadium, with “the” → SWAMP

2D. “2001: A Space Odyssey” villain → HAL

3D. Cast out from a country → EXILE

4D. “Uptown Funk” and “Downtown,” for two → SONGS

7D. “Can I bend your ___ for a second?” → EAR

10D. Like an ambitious, competitive personality → TYPEA

11D. Simple-to-play card game for two → WAR

12D. Simple-living sect → AMISH

13D. Shop owner’s stock → GOODS

16D. Barkeep on “The Simpsons” → MOE

I feel like the New York Times accidentally published their Saturday Mini Crossword a day earlier. This Mini was way harder than a typical Friday edition. It’s a very clever puzzle, though! As you can see, the crossword itself looks like a domino, and when you fill in the circled letters it spells DOMINOES. It must be an homage to the new NYT game Pips.

As far as solving this monster, I was lucky to just know enough of these to fill in the rest. I was pretty sure about SHEDS because my current house has like six sheds, all of which were there when I bought it…from people whose last name was Shedd. I am not kidding. I knew for sure that 6-Across was ALIEN and was 99% sure that 4-Down was SONGS. 7-Down was clearly EAR.

In the second block, YAM was an obvious sweet potato and ASHES seemed like a safe bet. 12-Down was obviously AMISH. And MOE is the bartender from The Simpsons. At this point, I had enough filled in to start taking a crack at the rest. The whole thing took me 1:46 but I could see this one taking people longer just because of how odd and different it is. But also fun! See you in a couple weeks, Crosswordlers!

How did you do? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

If you also play Wordle, I write guides about that as well. You can find those and all my TV guides, reviews and much more here on my blog. Thanks for reading!