A Mini Challenge

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/briefing/mini-crossword.html

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Because I’m the creator of the New York Times Mini Crossword, people often assume that I’m a trivia expert. The embarrassing truth is that my trivia knowledge is heavily weighted toward things with four and five letters and a lot of vowels. Sure, I can tell you Elvis Presley’s middle name (Aron), or that a small sewing kit is known as an “etui,” but I’m not going to be much help at your local pub trivia night.

People who don’t do crosswords often believe that you need an encyclopedic knowledge of arcane facts to complete a puzzle. My mission with the Mini is to change that perception.

As much as possible, I avoid obscure words that solvers would know only if they’ve done 1,000 crosswords before. Instead, I test solvers on the stuff of everyday life: state capitals, street signs, internet slang and the occasional random animal fact.

In a perfect puzzle, the trivia clues draw you in, leaving you wanting to know the answer.

That idea guides today’s custom Mini crossword, specifically designed for The Morning. If you’ve never tried a crossword before, you can warm up with a few trivia questions. Solve these brainteasers for a head start on today’s Mini:

What word becomes shorter when you add letters to it?

What is the only seven-letter word to use all five vowels and Q?

What is the only planet in our solar system not named for a deity?

For those who have never tried a Mini crossword before, it’s a free, daily 5x5 puzzle (7x7 on Saturdays) available to all Times readers. The small grid takes only a few minutes to complete (even less once you get good!), and it is packed with lively vocabulary, timely references and witty minithemes. You can even compete against your friends for the fastest solving time by using our Leaderboards feature. I hope you’ll check it out!

The answers to today’s brainteasers are found in the Mini crossword and at the bottom of this newsletter.

How to get started solving the mini and the Monday and Tuesday crossword puzzles.

How Connections, our new game, is put together.

Need help with today’s crossword? The columnist Caitlin Lovinger breaks it down.

The street style outside men’s fashion shows in Paris and Milan featured neck scarves, graphic tops and clothes worn backward.

Alan Arkin, who had a long career as a character actor who specialized in comedy but was equally adept at drama, died at 89.

The opulent wardrobes in “And Just Like That …” may signal the end of the stealth wealth era, Vanessa Friedman writes. The latest episode was filled with shoes.

“Barbenheimer”: People are planning how to watch both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” a movie about the atomic bomb designer, on their shared release day.

ESPN laid off on-air personalities, including Suzy Kolber and Jalen Rose.

Rachel Griffin Accurso spoke with The Times about how she became Ms. Rachel, the overall-wearing toddler video sensation.

Russia’s International Tchaikovsky Competition, once one of the world’s most prestigious music contests, had fewer participants this year. Many arts leaders see it as a propaganda tool.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s plan to cancel student debt for tens of millions of borrowers, saying it overstepped executive powers.

Biden said he would seek new ways to relieve student debt.

If you have loans, the Education Department is finalizing a new system that could lower payments.

The court also backed a Colorado web designer who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages.

It was not clear whether the ruling would apply to others who supply wedding services, like photographers or florists.

Other Big Stories

Judges in Brazil moved to block former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030 for spreading false claims about voting.

A man accused of involvement in the Jan. 6 attacks was arrested near Barack Obama’s home with weapons, ammunition and materials for explosives.

Fox News agreed to pay $12 million to a former producer who had accused the network of operating a hostile workplace.

🎬 “Insidious: The Red Door” (Friday): The actor Patrick Wilson has had a long and interesting career. Starting in Off Broadway and Broadway productions, he has now become somewhat of a “scream king,” flourishing in successful horror movies like the “Conjuring” franchise and this series, the fifth entry of which he both stars in and directs. Here, the boy from the first two “Insidious” movies is all grown up and headed to college, as are those spirits with the scary faces.

📚 “Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis” (Tuesday): In 2018’s “Dopesick,” her book about the opioid crisis in Appalachia, Beth Macy tried to explain why so many people have become addicted to these drugs. As Jan Hoffman wrote about Macy’s latest, soon out in paperback, the author, “no longer struggling with why, has moved on to an even more impenetrable question: How the hell do we extract ourselves from this quicksand?”

I have a deal with my husband and my mother: They work together to pit enough fresh cherries for baking, and I’ll make them any cherry-based dessert they want. This time, I’ll subtly nudge them toward this new cherry pie recipe from Melissa Clark, a fairly classic take on the ne plus ultra of summer pies. You can make this with either sweet cherries or sour ones — your choice. Not up for debate, in my opinion: a scoop of vanilla ice cream or dollop of whipped cream to serve. (A cherry pitter is the tool you need for this job; my colleagues at Wirecutter recommend this one.)

Clematis flowers: How to make them last longer in your garden.

Childhood dream: They wanted a fire pole in their house.

What you get for $630,000: A three-bedroom rowhouse in Richmond, Va.; a hillside retreat in Black Mountain, N.C.; or a 1908 cottage in New Orleans.

The hunt: Two sisters try to live together again as one buys an apartment. Which one did they choose? Play our game.

36 hours: Spend a long weekend in Martha’s Vineyard.

Old fashioned: Upgrade your Klondike bars with a better ice cream sandwich.

Mixing booze and exercise: You shouldn’t do it. But if you do, here’s how to stay safe.

For the hangover: Rich people are paying for IV drips.

If you’re a parent, you may have long ago said goodbye to the days of minimalist beachgoing. But a wagon can restore that simplicity: It’s a great way to lug toys, sunshades and chairs over sandy hillocks. Wirecutter’s super-durable pick has wide wheels and 6.7 cubic feet of space, making it easy to pull your mountain of gear — and even your little kids — across the sand. There’s value off the beach, too. Our favorite folding wagons work for all kinds of jaunts. — Rachel Hurn

NASCAR Grant Park 220: NASCAR drivers will race through downtown Chicago, reaching speeds of 140 miles per hour as they navigate tight turns around Grant Park. It’s the first time NASCAR’s top series has raced on city streets, and drivers have little chance to prepare outside of computer simulations, so the race could get chaotic. “Part of me is nervous because we’ve never been to a street course before,” the driver Ryan Blaney told NBC Chicago, “but I think it’s going to be a hell of an event.” 5:30 p.m. Eastern tomorrow on NBC.

NASCAR officials worked with the Art Institute to ensure that vibrations from the race would not damage the museum’s artifacts, The Times’s Mitch Smith writes.

Here’s a video tour of the course.

Here are today’s Spelling Bee and the Bee Buddy, which helps you find remaining words. Yesterday’s pangrams were mollycoddle and mollycoddled.

See the hardest Spelling Bee words from this week.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku.

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

Answers for the brain teasers:

SHORT

SEQUOIA

EARTH