The Times Quintagram

Quintagram is a small crossword without a grid. You get five clues, each with the length of its answer, and underneath them a block of letters: every letter of all five answers, sorted into alphabetical order. The task is to solve the five clues so that, between them, the answers use up every letter in the block exactly once.

Because the letters are pooled, it is not five separate anagrams. Each answer you find crosses its letters off and narrows down what the others can be, so the last clue or two often fall out from the letters that are left. On days when you know all five answers at once, the pool is a check that you have them right.

The Times publishes two versions under the same number each day from Monday to Saturday, six a week. The Concise Quintagram has plain definitions, and the Cryptic Quintagram has wordplay clues in the style of a cryptic crossword. Solvers on puzzle forums have noted that the five answers often share a hidden theme, though the puzzle does not ask you to find it.

On the web the answers are typed into boxes under each clue while the pool below crosses off each letter used, with a Shuffle button to rearrange what is left. Recent days stay in the two-week archive of The Times puzzles page and app, and the paper has also collected the puzzles in books. Access online needs a Times subscription.