By THEO BJORNSTAD
A certain stillness hung in the air the morning of Aug. 27, 2025.
Unbeknownst to anyone waking up that morning, something dear had already been irrevocably stripped from us. I, along with millions of other people on every corner of the globe, opened my phone to play through the New York Times Games section. Connections was completed without issue. The Wordle of the day — TOWER — fell just the same. Strands. Spelling Bee. Even Pips, released only a week or so prior, had become routine. But as a hundred thousand hands went to select the Mini Crossword, they were not faced with the game they had played only a few hours before.
The Mini Crossword had been murdered, and before all those thousands of people, before me, stood its tombstone. Now etched into its surface: “Subscribe to play the Mini.” Cruelly enough, you could still see it, and you still can. The distant, hazy memory of it, hidden just behind an unfeeling, towering (pay)wall, unwilling to buckle or waver for anything less than $6.95 per month.
It was 11 years old. For every single day in all of those 11 years, the NYT Mini Crossword was free to play on the paper’s website. The New York Times had a crossword long before that, of course, but in many ways, the Mini was nothing like its predecessor. It was designed as a sample, an introduction to the paper’s more challenging older sibling, and so it was made free to all — with the hope that people would eventually buy into a subscription and play the “full” version. After 4,024 days, this hope was snuffed out. Like most deaths, it came without warning. Without reason. Without closure.
The uproar was significant, at first. Some found solace in venting their grief.
“heard about this from the wife. we are a house in mourning,” one user posted on X.
Others were more direct in their frustrations.
“Soooo many things are behind a paywall and the mini was something to enjoy daily without needing to pay anything. Just another thing now we have to pay for to find any sense of small enjoyment in our days,” another mused.
Eventually, this surge of outrage and mourning subsided, quietly extinguished by the 24-hour news cycle in favor of more pressing, more current stories. But, for some reason or another, mine has not. I am still thinking about the Mini Crossword, even all these weeks after it was taken from me. And it wasn’t until this article came into being that I even felt like I knew why. It’s because The Mini Crossword stood for something. It was a reminder that, as small as it was, there were some things that you simply could not charge for. Going on a hike. Watching a sunset. Taking a day at the beach. In a way, the Mini is emblematic of a world that is quickly leaving us. One where you didn’t have to spend $20-30 dollars to do something fun on a day off. To go bowling, or go to an ice rink, or go see a movie, and not be wracked with guilt after the fact. But that world doesn’t make enough money — doesn’t ensure that the C-Suite can summer in the Hamptons for three months out of the year. And so, the free Mini could no longer exist. There was money yet to be made, pockets still to be drained from the trickle of joy that the Mini Crossword provided to thousands or more. It was not enough for the New York Times to just be profitable, it had to be more profitable every year, every quarter, than the one before.
At the end of the day, the New York Times is a publicly traded company. Their primary goal is to keep growing. The Mini, as it existed three weeks ago, was a decidedly unprofitable feature. It existed, as a loss leader, with the sole purpose of driving people to the site, and hopefully getting them to buy a subscription. It’s unsurprising, then, that something like the Mini Crossword couldn’t be free forever. It was a relic of a different era, an era when print media was stronger, healthier, and more resilient. When not every bone in the bodies of our largest, most established publications, was dedicated to the production of shareholder value. Before we had to watch all of our food packaging gradually shrink to half of its previous size. Before you had to take out a loan just to afford a drink at the bar. Before we watched everything get worse and worse every year for the average person, all while being told the economy is “stronger than ever.”
The Mini is just another soon-to-be forgotten casualty on that road, another morsel of comfort divided up, shrunken, and sold back to us. Part of me feels that writing this at all is an overreaction. That I shouldn’t feel this broken up about something so inconsequential — but I’ve only had to tell myself that more and more as the years stretch on. It is exhausting, having to endure this eternal decline, constantly accepting the new normal, like a frog in a pot of water slowly brought to boil. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. Still, at the end of it all, the Mini doesn’t matter. It’s a 5×5 grid of squares you fill in with text according to some clues. The New York Times doesn’t owe me, or anyone else, the daily games it continues to host for free on its website. I’ll still miss it, though. I’ll still miss the world that created the Mini, and everything it stood for, as it continues to get further and further away from us.
For those wanting a Mini Crossword back in their lives, I have some good news. While it hasn’t managed to completely fill the hole in my heart, the LA Times has a Mini Crossword of its own that, for the foreseeable future, is committed to remaining free. It even has an archive of past puzzles freely available, which the NYT used to charge for, even while the Mini was free. It’s a small comfort, in times like these, to know that a few institutions are still holding firm in the face of financial pressure, still offering these small day-to-day joys. But the question remains — if even the NYT Mini wasn’t safe — how long will it be until this one is taken from us too?
Featured image: Betty Cavicchia’28
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