“Kind of orange with a ‘belly button'” NYT Mini Crossword puzzle clue answer and hints

Do you love peeling and eating oranges? Today’s NYT Mini Crossword clue, “Kind of orange with a ‘belly button,'” tests your knowledge of orange varieties while also connecting to a body part.

If the clue’s wordplay is a bit too much for you to handle, here are today’s hints and answers for the NYT Mini Crossword on Sept. 3 so you can breeze through.

‘Kind of orange with a “belly button”’ NYT Sept. 3 Mini Crossword hints and answer

• Hint 1: The answer is sometimes used metaphorically to describe the center or focal point of something.
• Hint 2: The five-letter word has roots in Old English.
• Hint 3: It starts with the letter “N.”
• Hint 4: The solution is also a type of body piercing.

Let’s stop eating oranges and reveal the answer. 

Did you see it coming? The answer to seven across in the Sept. 3 New York Times Mini Crossword is “NAVEL.” According to Merriam-Webster, the word “navel” means “a depression in the middle of the abdomen that marks the point of former attachment of the umbilical cord or yolk stalk,” which directly refers to the “belly button” part of the clue.

However, there’s another wordplay hidden in the clue, the “Kind of orange,” which refers to Navel oranges that are grown in countries like Brazil, the U.S., China, Spain, and many others. 

‘Kind of orange with a “belly button”’ NYT Mini Crossword difficulty rating

Whenever there’s wordplay involved in a NYT Mini Crossword clue, the difficulty ramps up significantly because you need to think in a specific way—but you can still arrive at the word through various means. If you were able to guess the word “navel” from the fruit or the body part, then it shouldn’t have troubled you much. So, I’d give it a three out of five for difficulty.

NYT Mini Crossword (Sept. 3) answers

Across

• 1A Concert tees, pins, posters, etc.—MERCH
• 6A Quick on one’s feet—AGILE
• 7A Kind of orange with a “belly button”—NAVEL
• 8A As good as it gets—IDEAL
• 9A Study of the stars and planets, for short—ASTRO

Down

• 1D Suffix for a huge fad—MANIA
• 2D Old-style “Yikes!”—EGADS
• 3D Patented metal fastener on Levi’s jeans—RIVET
• 4D Word shouted during a defibrillator scene in a hospital drama—CLEAR
• 5D Name tag headline—HELLO

How to play other word games like the NYT Mini Crossword

Do you love solving word games like the NYT Mini Crossword? Then you should try your hand at solving the LA Times and Washington Post puzzles. If you’re looking for something out of the box, then Strands and Spelling Bee are solid options to enhance your vocabulary.