The answer is TRICE, five letters. The noun now survives only in the phrase in a trice, meaning very quickly, and that single phrase has kept it in steady crossword use for decades. FLASH and JIFFY take the same five squares, so one crossing is worth getting before you write anything in.
Five squares, three candidates, nothing shared
TRICE, FLASH and JIFFY all answer this clue, all take five squares, and not one of them shares a letter with another in the same position. That is unusually convenient. Whatever crossing you have, in whichever square, it eliminates two of the three at once. POINT, as in a point in time, also fits five squares; it shares only the middle I with TRICE and nothing with the other two.
If you have nothing to go on, TRICE has the deepest record under this exact clue in American papers, running back more than twenty-five years, while FLASH has turned up in recent grids as well. Start with TRICE and let the first crossing confirm it.
A trice was a single pull on a rope
The noun began on board ship. Around 1300 a trice was a pulley, windlass or tackle, from Middle Dutch, and the related verb meant to haul something up and fasten it with a rope. The phrase at a trice, recorded from the early fifteenth century, meant in a very short time, literally at a single pluck or pull. The time it takes to heave once on a line became a measure of speed.
The verb keeps a nautical sense in dictionaries, to haul or hoist something and tie it up by means of a rope, but the noun has drifted away from ships entirely. The ropes are gone from the phrase; only the speed is left.
Noun or adjective changes the length
Instant can be a noun, as in wait an instant, or an adjective, as in instant results. Every short fill for this clue is a noun for a tiny span of time. The adjective reading leads somewhere else: IMMEDIATE, nine squares, which appears under this clue most often in British quick crosswords but has turned up in American grids too.
Nine squares is the one length where both readings compete, because TWINKLING, a noun, also takes nine. Stack IMMEDIATE over TWINKLING and not one square matches, so whichever crossing arrives first tells you whether the setter meant the adjective or the noun.
The clue word itself explains the split. Instant comes from the Latin instans, present, pressing or urgent, literally standing near, and English used the noun for an infinitely short space of time from the late fourteenth century. The adjective meaning done or occurring at once is recorded by the 1590s, long before the phrase instant coffee appeared in 1912.
Short spans of time, sorted by squares
| Letters | Answer | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | SEC | Short for second |
| 4 | SNAP | In a snap |
| 4 | WINK | In a wink |
| 4 | TICK | Colloquial, mostly British grids |
| 4 | JIFF | Informal form of jiffy |
| 5 | TRICE | The lead answer |
| 5 | FLASH | No overlap with TRICE |
| 5 | JIFFY | No overlap with either |
| 5 | POINT | A point in time |
| 6 | MOMENT | The six-letter option |
| 9 | IMMEDIATE | Adjective reading |
| 9 | TWINKLING | From the twinkling of an eye |
| 11 | SPLITSECOND | Hyphen dropped |
| 12 | BLINKOFANEYE | Spaces dropped |
SEC deserves a word of its own. American papers have run SEC for Instant almost as often as TRICE, so a three-square slot is not a mistake in the grid; it is the abbreviation for second, as in just a sec.
The phrases behind the fills
Nearly every short answer here lives in speech with a preposition attached: in a trice, in a flash, in a jiffy, in a snap, in a wink. That gives setters a second way into the same entries, through fill-in-the-blank clues built on those phrases, and it is why knowing the phrase often matters more than knowing the definition. TWINKLING comes from the longest of them, in the twinkling of an eye, familiar from the King James Bible’s line in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
JIFFY is the mystery of the group. It is first recorded in 1776 as jiffin, was spelled jiffy by 1780, and its origin is unknown. One old account says it was thieves’ slang for lightning, which would suit the meaning, though the dictionaries report that claim without vouching for it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a five-letter word for instant?
TRICE is the usual five-letter answer, from the phrase in a trice. FLASH, JIFFY and POINT also fit five squares. TRICE, FLASH and JIFFY share no letter in any position, so one crossing is enough to tell those three apart.
Where does the word trice come from?
It began as a nautical word for a pulley or windlass, from Middle Dutch. The phrase at a trice, recorded from the early fifteenth century, meant in a very short time, literally at a single pull on a rope, and in a trice is now the only place the noun survives.
What if the answer needs nine letters?
Nine squares can hold IMMEDIATE, the adjective reading of instant, or TWINKLING, the noun from in the twinkling of an eye. The two words share no letter in any position, so any single crossing tells you which one the setter intended.
