Aug. 28, 2025 will forever be “a date which will live in infamy,” as Former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it, or how I, more recently and importantly, put it when I awoke scornful on that fateful morning. For this was the morning in which the New York Times’ Mini Crossword Puzzle was shackled and bolted behind a paywall and a subscription. “The Mini,” as it is often and commonly referred to, is a staple of teenage procrastination sessions and a classic justification to stay up a little later after extending the Duolingo streak. The game, typically conformed to a square or rectangular shape, is derived in the same logic as any other crossword you may find in a newspaper, but it takes on a smaller size with words that typically never exceed six letters. The game progresses in difficulty as the week marches from Monday (which is, allegedly, the day with the easier clues) to Sunday (when I usually give up). For casual players, the aim of the game is to complete the puzzle by typing in words that correspond to given clues into the allotted squares. In the competitive scene, the aim is to rifle through each clue and solve the puzzle in as little time as possible. This goal, evidently, becomes difficult when you are subjected to pay $1.99 a month to play and are a college student unwilling to cough up the dues. I, myself can (or should I say could) complete the game in under 30 seconds, so my opinion on this is perhaps the most valid of them all.
Enraged, betrayed and antagonized were words I could use to describe my aforementioned morning, but surprised would not be one. See, the impetus behind the NYT’s choice is not particularly obscure, as it is indubitably a thinly veiled excuse for the cooperation to indulge in some beautiful acts of capitalism. Pink Floyd puts it best: “Money, it’s a gas. / Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.”
Besides, the NYT’s actions simply fall in line with the now-normalized tragedy of paywalling things once they have been thoroughly enjoyed. In the contemporary age, music online has become effectively impossible to listen to without either suffering through a barrage of advertisements or paying an obscene amount of money (which I already mentioned college students do not have) per month. And for what? Just so a musician can get paid a hundredth of a penny? Don’t even get me started on sports. I can’t watch America’s favorite pastime of baseball unless I’ve purchased MLB TV. And not once in the past five years have I ever heard someone sit down and say, “Let’s make a Quizlet for the test,” ever since they decided to get greedy. Once a religious part of school studying, and a pretty effective tool for memorizing terms and subjects, now stands as an obsolete memory. It almost feels like these big companies want us to find alternative mediums for their products.
You would think that since the British tried taxing our stamps 260 years ago, the American common folk would have learned not to take egotistically corporate nonsense from anybody anymore, but I fear “we the people” have lost our rebellious roots somewhere along the way.
It should be noted that this article is not made with outright malice towards the Times itself, as I appreciate its existence is a constitutional safeguard from a dismantled democracy. Should, however, the New York Times capitulate to the will of its avid game community? Certainly. The cries and conversations I heard and had myself in Whitney Dining Hall alone are enough to make one think “the NYT was big brother himself.” The people are asking, “If first this, what is next?” Perhaps Strands will go? Spelling Bee? That one Domino one, that I barely understand? Suddenly all semblance of education is gone, the world is set on a slippery slope to the destruction of our entire society and it’s all the New York Times’ fault.
Huskies, I am angry, more so, I am concerned. The future of our collective fun is in shambles.