Why this size has its own URL
Five by five is the size people mean when they say mini: the Times anniversary note, the LA Times game, the Guardian’s five-across five-down, Fox’s short daily. Putting the 5×5 on the same URL as a 7×7 would make the page answer two searches at once. This URL is only the small grid. The larger one lives under 7×7. I am not also creating easy, medium, and hard copies of this page. A difficulty label without a sourced scale would be decoration.
The pattern is rotationally symmetric. Black squares sit in the four corners. The top and bottom answers are three letters. The three middle rows are five. The two edge columns are three, and the three inner columns are five. That is ten words, which matches the “about ten answers” description Daily Games to Play uses for several newspaper minis.
Questions
How many 5×5 puzzles are there?
Fourteen, dated 22 October 2026 through 4 November 2026. Use the selector to choose any of them without changing the URL.
Can I switch to 7×7 here?
Use the 7×7 page. The size stays in the URL so the two pages do not collapse.
Sources
Public-source check: 2026-11-04. Pages from the same publisher count as one source.