Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Baseball is back! You’ll see baseball images patterned throughout today’s Mini Crossword grid, and when you solve the puzzle, they’ll spell out a certain word. Play ball! Er, read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Degrees for boardroom execs
Answer: MBAS

5A clue: «___ want for Christmas …»
Answer: ALLI

6A clue: What Hamlet holds while giving his «Alas, poor Yorick!» speech
Answer: SKULL

7A clue: Wild, as an animal
Answer: FERAL

8A clue: Sphere
Answer: ORB

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Word after «match» or «mischief»
Answer: MAKER

2D clue: Bit of writing on a book jacket
Answer: BLURB

3D clue: Penne ___ vodka
Answer: ALLA

4D clue: Window ledge
Answer: SILL

6D clue: Bay Area airport, for short
Answer: SFO

McDonald’s has seen success with themed combo meals, including its holiday Grinch Meal. Now, the fast-food chain is capitalizing on Netflix’s Oscar-winning animated film, KPop Demon Hunters, with new upcoming menu items and both a breakfast meal and a lunch/dinner offering. Let’s hope you like the color purple.

The HUNTR/X Meal, named for the K-pop girl group in the movie, is a 10-piece chicken McNuggets meal that includes a medium drink and three special menu items. 

Ramyeon McShaker fries come with a small bag of soy, garlic, sesame and spice seasoning, along with regular McDonald’s french fries. You sprinkle the seasoning into the provided bag, dump in the fries, shake it all up and eat.

The meal includes two new sauces for the fries and nuggets. Hunter sauce is a sweet chili sauce mixing notes of chili, garlic and pepper. But my favorite item on this new menu is Demon sauce, a bold mustard sauce with some heat and a bold purple color. There’s just not enough dark purple food out there.

There’s also a new dessert, the Derpy McFlurry, which blends creamy vanilla soft serve with berry-flavored popping boba pearls, served with a swirl of wild berry sauce. McDonald’s named it for the supernatural feline, Derpy Tiger, from the movie.

If breakfast is your bag, the new morning meal is the Saja Boys Breakfast Meal, named for the movie’s boy band.

It includes a Spicy Saja McMuffin sandwich, which is a sausage McMuffin with egg and a spicy Saja sauce, hash browns and a small drink.

Both meals come with a photocard for one of the bands and a Derpy card. The Derpy card includes a QR code you can scan to unlock online content about the film.

The full KPop Demon Hunters menu should be available at participating McDonald’s beginning March 31.

The McDonald’s Grinch meal (and its accompanying patterned socks) sold out quickly, so KPop Demon Hunters fans may want to mark their calendars and nab a meal when they are released.

An unexpected guest escorted Melania Trump at the Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit on Wednesday: a Figure 03 humanoid robot. 

During the event, the first lady pitched a future where AI-powered humanoid robots — presented as an idealized educator named «Plato» — provide students with personalized and instant access to human knowledge, including philosophy and art. 

The Figure 03 robot is made by Silicon Valley-based robotics company Figure AI, which introduced its third-generation humanoid robot in October last year. The Figure 03 robot costs around $25,000, according to Forbes. 

Figure 03 was designed for people to use in their homes, with demo videos showing it folding laundry, lifting eggs from a carton, using a washing machine and delivering drinks to its owners lounging by the pool. It was also shown in corporate use cases as a receptionist and a package deliverer. Using a proprietary AI engine called Helix, it can autonomously perform these tasks and respond to your voice commands. 

The humanoid was seen walking slowly down the red carpet at the tech summit and then delivering opening remarks. 

«I’m grateful to be part of this historic movement to empower children with technology and education,» the Figure 03 humanoid robot said. It then said «welcome» in various languages. 

The first lady later said that AI-powered humanoid robots could exist in children’s homes as an aid to their education to «boost analytic skills and problem solving and adopt in real time to a student’s pace, prior knowledge and even emotional state.»

The two-day summit is hosting leaders from 45 nations and 28 technology organizations, and is intended to «empower children through education and technology,» according to a White House statement. Guests included representatives from tech giants such as Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and AI data analytics company Palantir.

The summit is part of the first lady’s Be Best: Fostering the Future initiative, which aims to help children learn using advanced technology. It was introduced in 2018 as an awareness campaign aimed at combating cyberbullying and helping children affected by the opioid crisis.

US Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke about AI being one of the Department of Education’s main priorities on the first day of the summit.

«If we’re able to scale these resources effectively by investing in AI infrastructure and training, we can offer expert instructions across countless fields, to hire volumes of people at a fraction of the cost,» McMahon said Tuesday at a round table meeting.

According to McMahon, the Department of Education has already dedicated millions of dollars in grants to support the use of AI in schools. 

The event follows criticism of the Trump administration’s 2025 executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. While the Department of Education hasn’t been officially abolished, it has undergone significant policy changes, funding cuts and workforce reductions. 

The introduction of a humanoid robot at the summit sparked significant backlash among many who are wary of the technology’s role in the classroom. Critics took to social media to voice concerns that these machines could eventually replace teachers, stripping the education system of essential human connection, and leading to increased layoffs and cost-cutting. 

On one Huffington Post Instagram post featuring the robot, commenters expressed deep skepticism, with one user sarcastically noting, «Nice, getting rid of educators in favor of a robot,» while another flatly rejected the concept, stating, «No, I don’t want to imagine a world with emotionless robots educating our children.»

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.