The particular annoyance of a clue that seems simple but isn’t is familiar to anyone who has spent a Sunday morning bent over a crossword grid, pencil hovering, coffee cooling. “Small monkey” is among them. Three phrases. Deceptively easy. Nevertheless, it has plagued puzzle solvers for years, primarily because the solution is solely dependent on the number of squares you must fill.
For at least 20 years, and occasionally longer, the clue has appeared in popular American crosswords. It has been logged more than twenty times by Crossword Tracker, one of those unobtrusive online resources that puzzle enthusiasts rely on. In December 2024, Newsday published it. It was published in February 2010 in The Guardian’s brief crossword puzzle. The AV Club, USA Today, Universal, LA Times, and Pat Sajak’s syndicated puzzles. It keeps returning. Perhaps because the answers are brief, helpful for creating grids, and just cryptic enough to feel clever without going too far, editors seem to adore it.
A tiny, repeating cast is formed by the standard solutions. The most common is TITI, a four-letter name for a real South American monkey belonging to the Callicebus family. Technically a long-tailed African guenon, the four-letter word MONA is used more frequently than zoologists would like for the “small monkey” clue. The eight letters that make up MARMOSET are actually tiny—sometimes the size of a person’s thumb. When builders need it, TAMARIN sneaks in at seven letters. Although purists will tell you that a lemur isn’t actually a monkey, and they are correct, LEMUR occasionally appears at five. However, crosswords have always been loose with taxonomy.
Observing the same few responses repeatedly has an almost humorous quality. In 2009, a solver entered TITI into a USA Today puzzle. The same thing was done for Newsday by another solver in 2024. The same clue, the same solution, fifteen years later. It’s the crossword equivalent of a stage actor who keeps getting cast in the same parts for ten years straight because no one wants to take a chance on something different and the casting directors are all acquainted.
The clue’s resistance to the wider modernization of American crosswords is intriguing. Grids have been pushed toward more modern language, pop culture, and fresher fill by Will Shortz and his peers. TITI still exists, though. MONA does the same, though it typically shows up disguised as a misdirect, alluding to the Da Vinci painting before coming out as a primate. Because grids are harsh mathematical objects, editors rely on these short, vowel-heavy words. A four-letter monkey with two I’s is practically a gift when it comes to crossword architecture. You need words that interlock smoothly.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the clue also alludes to an earlier aspect of the crossword tradition, a holdover from a period when puzzles primarily relied on geography, taxonomy, and natural history. For decades after the first American crossword puzzle was published in 1913, puzzle solvers were expected to be familiar with primates, rivers, and obscure birds. There is still some of that residue. The tiny monkey clue is a sort of fossil that is still present in contemporary puzzles and still serves its purpose.
The practical advice is simple for novice solvers who encounter it for the first time. The squares should be counted. Four letters most likely mean MONA or TITI. TAMARIN receives seven points. MARMOSET is number eight. Usually, the crossing letters will resolve the remaining issues. Although purists will contend that this defeats the purpose, there are dozens of crossword solver websites that can provide the solution in less than a second.
Even so, there’s a tiny satisfaction in solving it on your own. You sit there and mentally sort through whatever you know about primates until you find the correct one. It’s a small triumph. However, tiny victories are the foundation of puzzles, and it turns out that a small monkey has been silently delivering them for years.
