In case you missed Friday's NYT Mini Crossword, you can find the answers here:

ForbesToday's NYT Mini Crossword Clues and Solutions for Friday October 4thFrom Paul Tassi

October is here and I'm back, baby! It's been two weeks since I was your mini crossword host, and now I'm taking over the baton from my colleague Paul Tassi. I'll pass it on to my colleague Kris Holt in a week, but for now you stick with me, bwahahaha! It's the weekend, which means this is the hardest mini crossword of the week. Get ready to solve some more difficult words than usual.

The NYT Mini is a smaller, faster, more digestible and bite-sized version of the larger and more challenging NYT Crossword and, unlike its bigger brother, is free to play without the need for a New York Times subscription. You can play it on the web or in the app, although you need the app to manage the archive.

A good tactic with crosswords is to get as many crosswords as possible first, then you'll find that many of the crosswords are already done – or vice versa if the crosswords are more difficult.

While some of today's words are fairly simple, others might leave you stumped. You can find the answers below. Spoilers ahead, of course. Skip ahead to see the picture of today's solved puzzle.

ABOVE

1 – Lego piece – BRICK

6 – Company whose name is spelled with up to 10 O at the end of its websites – GOOGLE

7 – Inventor of the first commercially available electronic instrument, a synthesizer – BOBMOOG

8 – Largest country without an official language – USA

9 – Some Smart Devices – TVS

10 – Muscular dog with black and brown fur, familiar

12 – If freezing rain falls – SLEEP

13 – Warthopper – TOAD

DOWN

1 – Milk drink with “pearls” – BOBATEA

2 — CD — ROM

3 – “Aha!” – I GOT IT

4 – Pumpkin Spice Ingredient – ​​CLOVES

6 – Separate yourself from the rest of the band – GOSOLO

7 – Go “Pop” – BURST

11 – Bill's time-traveling film partner – TED

This was a little tricky, but I think it helped tremendously that BRICK was the right word for 1-Across. This made a lot of down words pretty easy, or at least helped me confirm that they were correct. I found SLEETS a bit strange and I had to replace IGOTIT with other words. My big mistake in the end was using Rob instead of Bob for BOBMOOG, but when I saw that 7-Down was RURST I figured it out pretty quickly. It took me a whopping 3:14 today, which isn't great, but oh well! How have you been? let me know TwitterInstagram or Facebook.

If you also play Wordle, I also write instructions for it. You can find these and all of my TV guides, reviews and much more here on my blog. Thanks for reading!