The answers to the Sunday, December 29, 2024 New York Times Mini Crossword are WARM, ATEAM, GONZO, SLEEP, LESS across and WAGS, ATOLL, RENEE, MAZES, MOPS down. The solution list below comes from Erik Kain’s Forbes guide to the puzzle, published December 28, 2024.
Spoiler warning: the full solution follows. If you want to finish the grid yourself, stop here and come back to check your answers.
Solution
Across
| No. | Clue | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Getting closer, so to speak | WARM |
| 5 | First-string crew | ATEAM |
| 7 | ___ journalism, style associated with Hunter S. Thompson | GONZO |
| 8 | Prized “activity” for new parents | SLEEP |
| 9 | Opposite of more | LESS |
Down
| No. | Clue | Answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Moves like an excited dog’s tail | WAGS |
| 2 | Ring-shaped reef | ATOLL |
| 3 | Zellweger of “Bridget Jones’s Diary” | RENEE |
| 4 | Puzzles in a children’s coloring book | MAZES |
| 6 | Cleans the floor | MOPS |
About this puzzle
- Date: Sunday, December 29, 2024. The guide’s publication date and title identify the year.
- Size: five across and five down entries, the standard Mini layout.
- Where to play: the Forbes guide describes the Mini as playable on the web or in the New York Times Games app.
- Access at the time: the guide said the archive required the app when it was published in December 2024. Access rules may have changed since then, so check the current NYT Games site before assuming a past puzzle is free to open.
The Forbes guide describes the Mini as a smaller, quicker version of the main NYT Crossword that is free to play without a New York Times subscription. That is the author’s characterization from December 2024, not a statement of current NYT policy.
Using the answers to check your grid
If you solved the puzzle and only want to confirm a single entry, compare your answer against the matching row above. Entries that cross can also help: for example, WARM (1 across) shares its first letter with WAGS (1 down), so a mismatch in one usually shows up in the other.
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