The answer is ARIADNE, seven letters. She is the Cretan princess who handed Theseus a ball of thread so he could retrace his route out of the Labyrinth. Her sister PHAEDRA also has seven letters and is also a daughter of Minos, which makes this one of the few mythological slots where guessing is genuinely risky.
The thread that gave English the word clue
There is a reason this myth belongs in a puzzle more than any other. The word clue started life as clew, meaning a ball of yarn, and the modern sense grew straight out of this story: Theseus unwound Ariadne’s clew on the way in, then followed it back out. Something that leads you through a confusing situation was, quite literally, a ball of thread first. The older spelling has not vanished either, since sailors still call the lower corner of a sail the clew.
So every clue in the grid, including the one you are looking at now, is named after the woman this entry asks for.
Two sisters, seven squares each
Minos had several children in the various tellings, but two daughters dominate puzzle usage, and the coincidence of length is awkward. Ariadne fell for Theseus, supplied the thread, sailed away with him and was left behind on the island of Naxos. Phaedra married him afterwards, and what followed became the subject of a tragedy by Euripides and, two thousand years later, of Racine’s version in French.
Line the names up and only the fifth square is shared, a D in both. That means a single confirmed crossing anywhere else in the entry resolves the pair immediately, which is faster than weighing the surface reading. If you must judge by wording instead: thread, maze, Minotaur or escape means Ariadne, while husband, queen or tragic drama means Phaedra.
What happened on Naxos
The abandonment is not the end of Ariadne’s story, and setters who like mythology use the later part. Dionysus found her on the island and married her, and in the most repeated version her wedding crown was thrown into the sky and became the constellation Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. That gives constructors a whole second set of surfaces, pointing at the same seven letters through wine, revelry or stars rather than through Crete.
The rest of the family, entry by entry
| Letters | Answer | Who it is |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | MINOS | The father, when the wording flips |
| 7 | ARIADNE | The thread and the Labyrinth |
| 7 | PHAEDRA | The sister, later wife of Theseus |
| 8 | PASIPHAE | The mother, wife of Minos |
Minos himself takes five squares and gets clued as a king of Crete or as a judge of the dead, a role Dante kept when he stationed him at the mouth of the second circle. Around them sit DAEDALUS, who built the maze, THESEUS, NAXOS and KNOSSOS, all of them regular fill.
Learning the household as a set pays better than learning any one member. A constructor who reaches for one Cretan name usually reaches for another in the same grid, so an unexplained mythological slot near a filled ARIADNE is far more likely to belong to this family than to anything unrelated.
Frequently asked questions
What is the answer to the daughter of Minos crossword clue?
ARIADNE, seven letters, in most grids. She gave Theseus the ball of thread that let him retrace his route out of the Labyrinth. Her sister PHAEDRA is also seven letters and also a daughter of Minos, so check a crossing before committing.
How do I choose between ARIADNE and PHAEDRA?
Read what the surface mentions. Thread, the Labyrinth, the Minotaur or an escape from Crete all point at Ariadne. Marriage to Theseus, or any reference to Greek or French tragic drama, points at Phaedra. The two names share only their fifth letter, so one crossing settles it.
Did Ariadne really give English the word clue?
The connection is real. Clue began as a spelling variant of clew, meaning a ball of yarn, and the sense of something that guides you through a confusing problem grew out of the thread that guided Theseus through the maze. Clew still names the lower corner of a sail.
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