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.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I started slow, because 1-Across stumped me, but the rest of the answers came quickly. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

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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: Blues, e.g.
Answer: MUSIC

6A clue: Late actress Catherine of “Schitt’s Creek”
Answer: OHARA

7A clue: List included with a board game
Answer: RULES

8A clue: April Fools’ shenanigan
Answer: PRANK

9A clue: Greek god of the underworld
Answer: HADES

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Transform gradually
Answer: MORPH

2D clue: “Star Trek” officer portrayed by Zoe Saldaña
Answer: UHURA

3D clue: Greens, e.g.
Answer: SALAD

4D clue: Woman’s name that’s an anagram of ERNIE
Answer: IRENE

5D clue: Containers for reds and whites
Answer: CASKS

It’s already smartphone season. Samsung’s annual deluge encompasses three new phones for 2026: the frontier-pushing S26 Ultra ($1,300) with its innovative Privacy Screen, the S26 ($899) and the S26+ ($999). The smaller flagships, yet again, are iterative versions of what came before, with the major differences centering on bigger batteries and brighter screens.

I’m getting waves of deja vu as I review the Galaxy S26, because at times I was writing exactly what I wrote last year — including the part about it being a little too similar to what came before.

Samsung/Engadget

Samsung’s smallest flagship phone is a solid if safe addition to the Galaxy series. However, it’s far too similar to its predecessors.

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Pros

• Bigger battery
• A flagship phone that isn’t huge
• More AI assistant options

Cons

• Too similar to last year’s S25
• Cameras could be improved
• Perplexity integration is limited

Hardware

Let’s focus on the changes. The Galaxy S26’s screen size is a little bigger than its predecessor’s; 6.3 inches, up from 6.2 inches on the S25. However, it still has the same FHD+ (2,340 x 1,080) resolution. Given the slight size difference, there’s no particular drop in sharpness. The screen can also go slightly brighter, topping out at 3,000 nits, which is always welcome — especially when Samsung has increased the battery to 4,300mAh from the S25’s 4,000mAh. (The S25 already impressed us with its battery longevity.)

The design, however, is largely unchanged. The camera trio now sits on a unified circular island and, well, that’s all I really have to say. Once again, it’s premium Samsung hardware, but otherwise I’d just be reiterating what I said last year… and our review from the year before that.

Inside, Samsung increased the base RAM to 12GB and the storage to 256GB on the S26, doubling the space found on the S25. With the S26’s processor, Samsung split the device into two different builds depending on region. In the US, you’ll get the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, like the S26 Ultra. Elsewhere, including my review device in the UK, the S26 and (S26+) have the in-house Exynos 2600.

Samsung’s Exynos 2600 SoC is its first 2nm chip and should offer power-efficiency improvements over larger alternatives. This year’s S26 didn’t struggle with any of the games I played or video-editing tasks. Samsung says its new chip delivers around 50 percent better performance across single- and multicore tasks. The Exynos 2600 includes a new Xclipse 960 GPU, which casubtlenuan deliver double the graphical performance of the Exynos 2500.

On Geekbench 6, the Exynos S26 scored 3151 on single-core tests and 10,664 on multicore tests (not far behind the Snapdragon-powered S26 Ultra). Similarly, the GPU score (24425) didn’t lag far behind — all pleasant surprises. There is a but coming.

Comparing battery rundown tests between a Snapdragon S26 and my Exynos version revealed a gap. Watching a looped video at 50 percent brightness, the Exynos iteration lasted almost 28 hours, while the Snapdragon 8 Elite S26 lasted nearly 30 hours. Sure, that’s great longevity regardless of which S26 model you get. But this year’s flagship does have a bigger battery, so why is the Exynos-powered version only matching last year’s phone?

Cameras

Not much has changed in the composition (or resolution) of the camera trio: there’s a 50-megapixel main, a 12MP ultrawide and a 10MP telephoto. That means that any improvements in photos and video are subtle, to put it kindly.

It’s hard to discern the improvements this year without really scrutinizing dark shots and zooming right in. The S26 does seem a little faster at capturing bursts and high-res video. And while I prefer the no-nonsense shooting of the Pixel 10a, the S26 offers a little more versatility with its zoom and ultrawide cameras. Cropped zoom, for example, lets you get closer to subjects beyond the 3X optical zoom, though more detail is lost than with the S26 Ultra and its larger resolution sensors.

Once you’ve taken the shot, Samsung’s bundle of AI tools can take over. Photo Assist attempts to corral all of these editing features into one place, offering quick ways to reduce reflections or edit out photobombers. You can now use natural language text prompts to guide your photo editing.

For example, I attempted to adjust the lighting more evenly on a photo of me taken outdoors with a flash. I could do it with my rudimentary photo-editing skills, but Samsung’s tools are fast and, crucially, very easy to use. It’s a feature where natural language interfaces really make sense.

With the front-facing camera, Samsung has added its Object Aware Engine, promising better, more accurate rendering of skin tones and hair, as well as an improved portrait mode. But again, I noticed marginal differences. The S26 seemed to have better color accuracy than its predecessor, resulting in slightly warmer selfies.

For videos, Samsung Super Steady mode is now more versatile, maintaining a consistent horizontal lock no matter how much you move around. As I mentioned during my hands-on, it’s an interesting addition, the kind of feature you typically see on action cams and gimbals. It works well, too, although the footage does pick up a bit of focus-pumping as it fights to stabilize everything.

Rounding out the new additions is an Autoframing mode that crops in on your tracked subject as they move around. There’s a degree of auto-detection for faces and pets, but you can tap to apply tracking to anything, to which it locks on well. It works particularly well with tripods, but there is a slight floating effect as the S26 tries to keep up with the phone’s movement. I also noticed warping at the edge of the lens when the camera app kept my subject centered in the frame.

Software

Samsung’s S26 launch event suggested this was the era of agentic AI, with assistants now positioned to connect the dots between tasks themselves. We’re not quite there, though.

The company has slightly expanded many of the features introduced last year. Now Brief is capable of pulling data from more apps to generate more comprehensive daily summaries, but I mostly saw the usual suspects: weather, calendar reminders and not much else.

Across the S26, a new Now Nudge feature will suggest actions with an unobtrusive icon, based on what’s happening on screen, such as sharing contact numbers with someone or suggesting calendar times while dealing with work emails.

Perplexity is an interesting addition. The S26 series is in a curious spot where it has hooks into no fewer than three AI assistants: Gemini, Bixby (bless its heart) and now Perplexity.

You do have to install the Perplexity app (and log in to use it), but you can then choose to make it your primary AI assistant. Odd things are missing: Samsung said Perplexity integration would work across the phone, including its own Browser app — something I was excited to test. Perplexity’s own browser, Comet, has a slick feature that lets it browse and summarize multiple tabs. I was in the middle of deciding where to eat during my recent trip to Barcelona, so I thought this was a great use case. However, that feature isn’t available in Samsung’s browser for now. According to Perplexity, Samsung will “integrate Perplexity’s APIs into the Samsung Browser, with agentic browser capabilities.”

Voice commands of “Hey Plex” also went unanswered. I found I had to manually grant permissions to the Perplexity app for it to work like Google’s Gemini. This could just be teething issues with a pre-release device and software, but Perplexity, for now, doesn’t offer enough utility beyond what I was already used to with Gemini.

Wrap-up

The Galaxy S26 is a solid phone, with upgraded battery capacity and more base storage. Whether you get the Exynos or the Snapdragon S26, there’s fortunately no performance gulf as has happened in the past. However, the shorter battery life is a disappointing discovery from Samsung’s first 2nm chip.

For Samsung’s smallest flagships over the last three years, it’s all been very samey. Is the company now focused on its true flagship Ultra phone and foldables to generate buzz and make things exciting? That’s what it feels like. There’s nothing wrong with this safe, solid Android phone, but you could pick up last year’s S25 and get an experience that’s 99 percent the same for $99 less.

After a relatively quiet few months, Amazon is bringing back another of its famously invented shopping holidays. The Amazon Spring Sale is on its third year, and it’ll be arriving again on March 25. Amazon says the sale will run through March 31 and, like last year’s event, customers are promised thousands of deals across various daily themed categories.

Of course, as we’ve seen in the past with Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, the true discounts on good products will likely be buried among junk deals on shoddy wares. The WIRED Reviews team tests gear all year long, and we’ll be recommending fact-checked discounts on the products we actively recommend to our friends, family, and readers. We’ve highlighted early deals below, and we’ll be updating this story with more when the event officially arrives.

WIRED Featured Deals:

The Sonos Roam 2 is the best smart speaker on the market for most people. It’s portable but has impressive sound despite its small form factor. Bluetooth pairing is fast and simple, and it has IP67 dust and water resistance. The battery has up to 10 hours of listening time. It can also connect to your Sonos home system when you aren’t taking it on the go. The Roam 2 basically never sells for less than this.

After five years of trying, Revolut has finally secured a full banking licence to form Revolut Bank UK, just days after applying for a US licence.

Revolut has made no secret of its ambition to build “the world’s first truly global bank”, applying just last week for its US banking licence, but it has taken it five years to gain that licence in the UK. It originally applied for the licence in 2021 and in 2024 was given a banking licence “with restrictions”.

Now it has announced that it has secured its full banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the UK, which will allow it to offer its 13m customers across the UK, including Northern Ireland, deposit protection of up to £120,000 from the FSCS. In Ireland, Revolut’s customers are served by its European-licenced entity Revolut Bank UAB.

Revolut describes the success as a “milestone”, and says that Revolut Bank UK will soon be able to start offering accounts as a fully licenced bank for both retail and business customers. It says it will gradually begin the process of rolling out current accounts to new customers in a few days, “starting with a small group and expanding over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth user experience”.

“Launching our UK bank has been a long-term strategic priority for Revolut, and marks a significant moment in our journey,” said Nik Storonsky, Revolut co-founder and CEO. “The UK is our home market and central to our growth. This is a vital step in our mission to build the world’s first truly global bank.”

“Securing this licence lays the foundation for our next chapter: expanding into a broader suite of products, including credit, to sit alongside the innovative services our customers already rely on every day,” said Francesca Carlesi, UK CEO at Revolut.

Revolut recently announced a global $13bn investment over five years, which it said would create 10,000 new jobs as it expands its global footprint. The company aims to launch in 30 new markets by 2030. One of the world’s biggest fintechs, Revolut currently operates across 40 markets globally, servicing around 70m customers.

The company recently expanded operations to Mexico, opened a new global headquarters in London and secured a payments licence in India. It hopes that this continued expansion can help it reach 100m customers by mid-2027.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

When EA confirmed there were no plans for a Sims 5, most fans were disappointed and moved on. Tytar decided to do something about it instead. With no background in game development whatsoever, he opened up Unreal Engine 5, gave himself a brutally tight 14 day deadline, and got to work building a playable version from scratch. Remarkably, he pulled it off. The result is a familiar top down experience where you guide your Sims through their daily lives, complete with a few pointed jabs at EA for leaving fans out in the cold in the first place.

The first challenge was getting the characters into the game in a way that actually looked right. Tytar used a free online tool called a model ripper to pull character models directly from his own Sims 4 save files, though what came out the other end was rough and needed a lot of work before it was ready for Unreal Engine. That meant getting into bone weights, which sounds more intimidating than it is but still requires a fair amount of trial and error to get feeling natural. Eventually he got his Sims to a point where they could walk, stand idle, and transition between poses without anything looking like it was about to collapse.

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With the basics in place, Tytar turned his attention to giving the Sims actual needs to manage. Energy, bathroom breaks, and hygiene all tick down at their own pace, and a basic mood system keeps you loosely informed about how your Sim is holding up. A plumbob floats above each character’s head and shifts color to give you an at a glance read on their state of mind, which honestly tells you everything you need to know without a single menu in sight. Sometimes the classics are classic for a reason.

The main game screen came next, and Tytar kept it clean and uncluttered in a way that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who spent time with the original Sims. A clock ticks away in the corner, your current cash balance sits in plain sight, and a little Polaroid style photo represents each member of the household. Speed controls are right there on screen too, with the 1, 2, and 3 keys handling the pacing just like they always did. Old habits die hard, and in this case that’s entirely the point

Clicking on a Sim brings up a small pop-up menu, and if you grew up with the original game you’ll immediately recognize the sound effect that comes with it. The options available shift depending on what’s nearby, and the go here command taps into Unreal Engine’s built-in navigation system to get your Sims moving around the lot in a way that feels surprisingly natural. Even the smaller animations hold up well, capturing those everyday moments that made the original so memorable. Watch a Sim crumple to the floor from pure exhaustion or desperately take care of one need while completely tanking another.

Careers and money came next, handled through a simple in game newspaper where job listings change from day to day. One morning you might find an opening in the culinary world, the next something a little more questionable. Pay comes in after each shift just as it always did, and for anyone who never quite played by the rules, the classic cheat codes are alive and well.

The final piece of the two week sprint was getting furniture placement and lot building into a working state. Buy mode lets you preview items in real time, rotate them with a click, and snap them into place with a satisfying precision that feels right at home in a Sims game. Build mode keeps things equally straightforward, giving you the tools to throw up walls and carve out rooms around a basic starter home layout. A free nature pack brought trees and grass into the yard, and a proper day and night cycle means shadows actually shift across the lot as the sun moves overhead, which is one of those small details that makes the whole thing feel surprisingly alive.

It all holds together well enough for a decent play session, long enough to appreciate some of the finer touches Tytar managed to sneak in along the way. Familiar faces like Mortimer and Bella Goth sit in their chairs and go about their business in a way that will put a smile on the face of any longtime fan. He even got a car driving around the lot, which is more than the official Sims 4 can say after years of updates. Even more impressive, not a single line of it was generated by AI. Every animation, every menu, and every line of code was built entirely by hand over the course of just two weeks.

Edwin Olding’s approach to building his own theme park began with an unlikely discovery on Temu, a two seater spin ride with three independently rotating rings, an electric motor, and basic safety features, all for a surprisingly reasonable $2,500. Most people would have scrolled straight past it, but Edwin saw exactly what it could become, another worthy addition to the 1,000 square foot storage unit that already housed a loop roller coaster and a pair of go-karts.

Weeks later a large container arrived from China, and it was clear the ride had earned every mile of its journey. Dirt, seawater stains, and rusted nuts told the story before he even got the box fully open. Once he did, and after plugging it into a high voltage socket in his garage, three rings unfolded and began spinning independently on their own axes. At the center sat an electric motor running dry v-belts, alongside a large electronics box covered in buttons that were entirely in Chinese. Safety restraints were present in the form of leg straps and a lap bar, though calling them reassuring would be a stretch.

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The control panel made a lot more sense once Edwin ran it through a translation app on his phone, revealing the first set of operating warnings. Exposed wires poked out from various points around the machine, making it pretty clear this wasn’t a plug and play situation. There was no power plug included either, so Edwin sourced one locally just to get things started. The wiring that came with the ride turned out to be far too thin for the job, overheating quickly under any real load, so he swapped it out for thicker six gauge wire and added a proper ground connection to keep things from getting out of hand.

Positioned in the center of the storage unit, the ride slotted in perfectly, leaving enough room around it to accommodate the 15 foot roller coaster track and keep a lane clear for the go-karts. A few neon palm trees and some artificial grass pulled the whole corner together with exactly the Florida vibe Edwin was going for. Getting the ride to sit completely stable took a bit of patience, the whole thing relied on a slot system that needed to be lined up just right, but once it was dialed in everything came together surprisingly well.

First tests revealed a lot about how the machine actually behaved once the power was on. A single button got things going and a built in timer let riders go for up to ten minutes at a stretch. One immediate quirk was that the local electricity frequency pushed the rings to spin noticeably faster than they would have back in China. Stopping in an emergency was handled by the same button cutting power instantly, which did the job but wasn’t exactly graceful since there was no way to slow things down gradually. Still, it stopped when you needed it to. As for the experience itself, riders climbed in, buckled up, and found themselves being thrown, swirled, and spun in every conceivable direction all at once.

Safety was never far from anyone’s mind during testing. The steel flexed under hand pressure in a few spots, the foot bindings had a habit of loosening over time, and the open rings left enough of a gap to make loose hair or wandering hands a genuine concern. Helmets were mandatory for every rider and Edwin made a point of reminding everyone to keep their arms tucked in throughout the ride. There was also a close call involving the wiring that could have turned serious, though the modifications they had made held up when it counted. Even with all the improvements, it was hard to ignore the fact that the ride had never been looked at by any official safety inspector, and some of those question marks were still very much open.