Saturday is a lie. We’ve known this forever.
The Mini isn’t actually mini on weekends. It’s long. It’s tedious. And on June 13, it decided to punish us for enjoying soccer season. World Cup watchers, take note. 4-Down was built for you. Or maybe just at you.
If you need hints for the big games—Wordle, Connections, Strands—the links exist elsewhere. This space is for the damage control of the daily grid.
Here’s the wreckage.
Across: The Pain
HALT. That’s 1-A. A sentry’s command. Short. Sharp. Like the rest of your attention span today.
ALOE vera. The plant. The gel. 5-A doesn’t care if you burn or heal, just fill the boxes.
Then 6-A asks you to type “ITLLPASS” into a crossword. No spaces. Why? Because pain is inevitable and so is formatting hell.
A million bucks? That’s a MIL for 10-A. Informal. Cool.
MOE was here for 11-A. The Stooge. The leader. The guy with the cap.
An UMP calls balls and strikes at 12-A. No umpire name needed. Just the title. Efficient? Or lazy?
13-A dropped the science. GLP -1. The drug class behind Ozempic. Wegovy. The reason your feed is full of waist trainers and miracle broths. It was unavoidable.
PEASHOOT at 14-A. A crunchy tendril. Have you actually seen a peashoot? Or did you just guess “PEA” and hope?
SHEA Stadium. 17-A. Home of the Mets, once upon a time. Before Citi Field. Before the confusion.
Finally, 18-A gave us SHEL Silverstein. “The Giving Tree.” We all know Shel. We all gave back too much.
Down: The Excuse
1-D offered a student’s lifeline: HALLPASS. You knew this. You’ve lived it.
The A in GOAT stands for ALL. 2-D. It’s not a goat. It’s a grammatical unit.
To chop something off, you LOP it. 3-D. Simple violence.
And then the monster. 4-D. The answer tying 1-D, 6-A, and 14-A together? TEAMGOAL.
It’s clever. It’s also a mouthful. And it references the World Cup. Obviously. The puzzle wanted to hit every buzzword at once. Soccer. Weight loss drugs. Shel Silverstein. Hall passes. Is this a game or a data dump?
8-D was IMUP. “Okay, my turn.” Social anxiety personified.
7-D completed the acronym: TIME is the T in GOAT. All-Time. Great.
9-D wanted SEPT for the ninth month. Abbreviations are boring but necessary.
SOLO means all by oneself at 8-D. Maybe you were solo solving. Maybe you peeked here. Who cares?
The librarian says SHH at 15-D. Quiet, please. The pain is ending.
You’re done. The grid is closed.
Did you get them right? Did you guess “GLP” or do you actually read medical journals?
The mini is over. The week begins again. Tomorrow
