NYT Mini Crossword — August 7, 2026
Hints — one at a time
Hint 1 of 5
Today's five-by-five isn't wide open — a few blocked squares trim the corners, so two entries running each way are only three letters long.
Hint 2 of 5
Nothing here is obscure: the across side leans on a shorthand computer brand, a word for squabbling, and what you do at the gate before takeoff.
Hint 3 of 5
The shortest across entry is an exclamation shouted when a basketball drops through touching only the netting.
Hint 4 of 5
One five-letter across answer names what the Kansas scenes of a certain 1939 musical are missing — it floods in the moment Dorothy steps outside.
Hint 5 of 5
Working downward: an insult for a fool, the green growth at the bottom of a pond's food chain, the surface pickleball is played on, the yellow vehicle that stands for New York, and the shade that both Stanford's and Harvard's crests share.
The answer — spoilers!
Reveal the full answer
- Apple computer — MAC
- What the Kansas scenes lack that the Oz scenes do not, in "The Wizard of Oz" — COLOR
- Quarrel (with) — ARGUE
- Get on an airplane — BOARD
- "Nothing but ___!" — NET
- Nincompoop — MORON
- Bottom of the aquatic food chain — ALGAE
- Pickleball venue — COURT
- Yellow symbol of N.Y.C. — CAB
- Like the logos of Stanford and Harvard — RED
This puzzle by the numbers
- 5 across, 5 down
- COLOR (5)
Counted from our own archive of NYT Mini Crossword answers — not published anywhere else.
