Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Thursday, August 21st

Looking for help with today’s NYT Mini Crossword puzzle? Here are some hints and answers for the puzzle.

Credit: NYT

We’re rapidly approaching the end of the work week. Huzzah! Another lovely summer weekend awaits. I’m looking forward to the coming week because rain is in the forecast. Lovely, wet, cool, glorious rain! It’s been too hot and too dry and too dusty and there was smoke in the air for a couple of days, which sets off my wildfire heckles.

Of course, that’s neither here nor there. We have a Mini Crossword to solve, so let’s get our thinking caps on!

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:

Across:

1A. Frequently asked q’s

5A. We invaded.

6A. Creator Mike White

8A. Electronic correspondence

9A. Late to class

Down:

1D. Steak

2D. Smell

3D. Near the other Q country

4D. Like an octopus

7D. Cunning, more like

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

Across

1A. F

5A. I

6A. L

8A. E

9A. T

Down

1D. F

2D. A

3D. Q

4D. S

7D. U

Okay, onto the answers! Remember, spoilers ahead!

Across:

1A. Common queries, informally — FAQS

5A. Only four-letter country with a “Q” in its name — IRAQ

6A. TV’s “The White ___” — LOTUS

8A. Something you might “Mark as read” — EMAIL

9A. Late — TARDY

Down:

1D. ___ mignon — FILET

2D. Burnt toast has a strong one — AROMA

3D. Only five-letter country with a “Q” in its name — QATAR

4D. Likely inspiration for the mythical kraken — SQUID

7D. Sneaky — SLY

I wasn’t sure about the first couple ACROSS words right away but I knew LOTUS (The White Lotus is a great show, even if Season 3 was kind of weak) and EMAIL was pretty obvious, to the point I wondered if it was too obvious. I moved to DOWN at this point, plugging in SLY and then FILET, AROMA and QATAR (which I thought of before IRAQ, go figure). This basically filled in everything except 1 ACROSS which I got once I plugged in SQUID. This one took me 49 seconds.

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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!