“Minute Cryptic is a bite-sized cryptic crossword designed to be solved in just a few minutes. Each puzzle features a small grid and clever, wordplay-driven clues—just like a traditional cryptic crossword, but faster, friendlier, and perfect for a quick brain workout anytime.”
Today’s, which I’ll spoil was:
Former partner lead us to “EX”.
Ate lead us to put E at the beginning and X at the end(like EX ate something).
Mostly Quinoa meant to use most of Quinoa’s letters in the solution.
Special Date is a synonym of the meaning.
Answer:
EquinoX
There are three basic hints and I almost always use all of them because they help me know what is what in this thing.
I was actually going to start a thread this weekend on this, but I’m not a regular on posting to the daily puzzle-type threads. I’d seem some Reels of someone doing these daily - and while at first they were utterly confusing, after a few weeks of sporadically seeing them, I started seeing the patterns, and downloaded the app.
These are fun - there’s a really steep learning curve for the many different things going on in these puzzles, but I think it’s worth the effort to slog through. This thread should be helpful.
Some more helpful hints:
Roman numerals: uses of spelled out words (i.e. “one”, “fifty”, etc.) tend to be their Roman numeral equivalent (“i”, “L”, etc., respectively).
“Indicators” are the enemy here. Words like “party” and “fluid” and “moving” and “confused” are anagram indicators - the nearby fodder is going to be mixed up as an anagram (and then other fodder is going to be inserted or deleted or added to it). There are several other types of indicators, and nearly every puzzle will have them.
Today’s clue is apparently a “rebus” type, which I normally associate with picture clues. I got it this morning with some hints.
Clue: “Shape of _ountain” (4)
The answer is: FORM
Later during the day it dawned on me how the clue works. You can fill in the blank with a couple different letters - specifically, F or M. And that’s what the answer is - “ForM”. :smack:
I hadn’t heard it as a synonym of waffles. It means to talk on and on and on, usually about stuff that isn’t important to the person listening. “She prattled on and on about her boyfriend issues,” said the strangero n the bus.
I caught “out of control” as an anagram indicator, with “you outspoken” as just the letter U, and deleting U from carousel. I’m terrible with anagrams, but managed to unscramble it. If I arrange the letters alphabetically it’s easier to see them as random letters to move around in my head.
I struggled. I get it now I see the solution. I just struggle sometimes to determine what to do. I get this one was reflection, so I went backwards. But I didn’t see what to do specifically, as in use the first letters backwards.
I think they’re going to start getting easier as you become more familiar with the indicators. Words like start, eject, insert, initial, final, etc. are starting to be more obvious.