Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
Your Strands expert
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Your Strands expert
Marc McLaren
NYT Strands today (game #216) – hint #1 – today’s theme
What is the theme of today’s NYT Strands?
• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… No way!
NYT Strands today (game #216) – hint #2 – clue words
Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
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GUST
CART
QUERY
BUSH
SHAME
CHANT
NYT Strands today (game #216) – hint #3 – spangram
What is a hint for today’s spangram?
• Can you believe it?!
NYT Strands today (game #216) – hint #4 – spangram position
What are two sides of the board that today’s spangram touches?
First: top, 1st column
Last: bottom, 4th column
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Strands today (game #216) – the answers
The answers to today’s Strands, game #216, are…
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SHAM
FAKE
QUACK
PHONY
HOAK
CHARLATAN
HUMBUG
SPANGRAM: THATSUNREAL
My rating: Moderate
My score: Perfect
After yesterday’s annoying Strands puzzle, today’s is much better. It’s hard, though – the theme of THATSUNREAL is a tricky one to identify, and you’ll probably have needed to get a couple of answers by accident, or to have used hints, to get started.
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That’s what happened to me; I found SHAM and FAKE while searching for hint words, and together with the theme clue of ‘No way!’ that was enough information for me to work with. Not that thinking of more words was easy; I got the likes of QUACK and PHONY through a mixture of luck and inspiration, but needed to hunt for quite some time.
Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Friday 4 October, game #215)
TITLE
ATLAS
FLARE
MANUAL
QUARTER
REGISTRATION
SPANGRAM: GLOVEBOX
What is NYT Strands?
Strands is the NYT’s new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT’s games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.
This week Amazon‘s early Prime-exclusive sale gave us some great deals, the Oura Ring 4 was announced, and Sonos said its app is almost fixed.
In case you missed these or any of the other biggest tech news stories of the week we’ve gathered the eight most important ones here so you can get up to speed.
8. Voting for the TechRadar Choice Awards 2024 opened
The TechRadar awards are back for 2024, and this year you can help decide the winner in a record 90 categories, split among the following sections:
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You can vote in every category, or just a few, but make sure all of your votes are cast before 00:01am PST / 03:01am EST / 08:01am BST on Friday October 11th 2024, otherwise it won’t count.
Once we’re done counting the votes we’ll combine the scores with the rankings of our expert judges to decide the final winners – with the one exception being the Readers’ Choice Award which is 100% decided by you. Winners in every category will be announced during our big TechRadar Choice Awards Week, starting Monday, October 28th.
7. Amazon Big Deals Day early sales began
Amazon Big Deals Day – a sort of Prime Day 2 ahead of this year’s Black Friday sale – kicks off officially on October 8, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of discounts going live as part of the early sale across Amazon US and Amazon UK.
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Just like with Prime Day, however, you must be a Prime member to access the exclusive Big Deals Day discounts – though some items are on sale for everyone, so you might be able to save big on the item you want without shelling out for a Prime subscription.
6. Sonos’ app apology tour has an end in sight
Sonos’ app launch in May was one of the biggest tech blunders of 2024, but this week it announced that 100% of the app’s missing features will be restored “in the coming weeks” – and that 80% have already made their return.
What’s more Sonos said that it’ll be extending the warranty of all Sonos products that are still under warranty by a year by way of an apology to disgruntled customers, and it now has made four pledges with the goal of “addressing the root causes of the problems with the app release” to ensure it never happens again.
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If you read about what reportedly went wrong with the Sonos app launch some of the new commitments sound like they’re simply trying to change the company culture back to what it was before its recent major shake-up, but words are words and actions are actions. On that note, we’ll have to see if Sonos sticks to its promise and can start to claw back consumer confidence after what can be generously described as a rough few months.
5. Disney responded to fans after axing highly rated shows and movies
We’re back here again, folks. The physical versus digital media debate has reared its ugly head once more after fans noticed that Disney Plus and Max have removed some critically acclaimed and popular movies and TV shows from their back catalogs this week.
After its latest streaming library cull drew particular fan ire, Disney responded by saying the removals accounted for “less than 2% of our total titles”, which has gone down as well as you might expect with many of its subscribers. As more and more films and series are permanently axed from the world’s best streaming services, it might be time for you to restart buying DVDs and/or Blu-rays.
4. We reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE
Samsung launched the Galaxy S24 FE alongside the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra last week, and we’ve since put the new phone through our full review process. The verdict? It’s a “shining example of how to do a more budget-friendly phone right.” For a cheaper price than the standard Galaxy S24, the Galaxy S24 FE delivers a high-quality display, strong performance levels, and a capable suite of cameras – not to mention the full gamut of Galaxy AI features that have become synonymous with the best Samsung phones.
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According to our tester, Samsung’s latest FE is an “AI-powered phone that’s light on sacrifices, heavy on value,” so if you’re in the market for a near-flagship upgrade that won’t break the bank, the Galaxy S24 FE is absolutely worth considering.
3. Oura Ring 4 announced with a new sensor design
Several new challengers may have entered the best smart ring, er, ring, but Oura isn’t about to go down without a fight. This week, it introduced the Oura Ring 4. It’s not a major redesign on the outside – we suppose there’s only so much you can do to tweak a simple band shape – but inside Oura is improving its device’s measuring accuracy (no matter its orientation), making the fit more comfortable, and giving the app a refresh too.
This rejigged sensor array – dubbed Smart Sensing – sounds like it could be a major convenience win for users. If you’ve never used a smart ring before, a quick TL;DR is they have a specific orientation that they like to be in so that the sensors are in the right place to take accurate measurements. If the ring rotates out of this preferred place then your readings will be less accurate, and even perfectly fitting rings can spin out of place throughout the day when you use your hands or while you toss and turn in your sleep.
The Oura Ring 4 eliminating this need for the ring to always be worn perfectly is a step in the right direction, and we’re even more excited to hear it’s not getting a price hike. It’s ready to preorder now ahead of its October 15 launch in in sizes 4 through 15 (in either Silver, Brushed Silver, Stealth, Black, Rose Gold, and Gold) starting at $349 / £349 (not available in Australia).
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2. Gemini Live now won’t cost you a dime to use
Gemini Live – a chatty version of the Google AI – has rolled out to all Android users for free. It was originally reserved only for paying subscribers, but now the voice assistant can be accessed by anyone who downloads the Gemini app – though it can only speak English for now.
After choosing one of ten voices, you can start conversing with the AI in a more natural way than you might be used to with Google Assistant or Alexa. Gemini will even respond in more human-like ways using casual language, or sounding like it’s brainstorming, rather than just responding to direct instructions.
If you’ve been waiting to try out Gemini Live now’s the best time to.
1. Verizon had a serious outage
If you live in the US and use Verizon, here’s one story you won’t have missed; from around 10 AM ET on September 30 the Verizon network experienced some serious issues until it was fixed over nine hours later.
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Affected customers couldn’t make calls, send text messages, or use data – or receive calls or messages from unaffected customers using AT&T and T-Mobile.
The FCC reportedly began an investigation into what caused the outage, however at the time of writing we don’t know what went wrong and might not find out for some time.
Strands is a brand new daily puzzle from the New York Times. A trickier take on the classic word search, you’ll need a keen eye to solve this puzzle.
Like Wordle, Connections, and the Mini Crossword, Strands can be a bit difficult to solve some days. There’s no shame in needing a little help from time to time. If you’re stuck and need to know the answers to today’s Strands puzzle, check out the solved puzzle below.
You start every Strands puzzle with the goal of finding the “theme words” hidden in the grid of letters. Manipulate letters by dragging or tapping to craft words; double-tap the final letter to confirm. If you find the correct word, the letters will be highlighted blue and will no longer be selectable.
If you find a word that isn’t a theme word, it still helps! For every three non-theme words you find that are at least four letters long, you’ll get a hint — the letters of one of the theme words will be revealed and you’ll just have to unscramble it.
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Every single letter on the grid is used to spell out the theme words and there is no overlap. Every letter will be used once, and only once.
Each puzzle contains one “spangram,” a special theme word (or words) that describe the puzzle’s theme and touches two opposite sides of the board. When you find the spangram, it will be highlighted yellow.
The goal should be to complete the puzzle quickly without using too many hints.
The iPhone 16 series brought Apple’s new A18 Bionic and A18 Pro chips. There was speculation that the “Pro” chip only had an advantage in the GPU and CPU clock speeds. However, die shots at the Apple A18 and A18 Pro SoCs confirmed that their designs are different, or at least more than expected.
Apple was the first smartphone company to implement 3nm chips with the Bionic A17 in the iPhone 15 series. However, only iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max users enjoyed this. The Cupertino giant fell back on the previous-generation A15 chip for the vanilla and Plus iPhone 15. This is probably the reason for the lack of Apple Intelligence support on those models. Apparently, Apple was not planning to jump on the mobile AI bandwagon anytime soon, but plans changed.
Common aspects between the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro chips
For the iPhone 16 series, Apple implemented redesigned next-generation A18 SoCs in all models. Still, the company developed a standard and a Pro version. Both share the same TSMC 3nm manufacturing process (N3E). Both CPUs integrate 6x cores, with 2x high-performance cores for the most demanding tasks and 4x high-efficiency cores for more common ones.
They also use the same InFO-PoP (Integrated Fan-Out Package-on-Package) technology. According to TSMC, InFO-PoP is a packaging method that includes “high-density RDL (Re-Distribution Layer) and TIV (Through InFO Via) for high-density interconnect and performance.” This method stacks DRAM directly on top of the SoC die, resulting in a smaller chip but with more powerful performance and better thermal control.
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In addition, the InFO-PoP technique facilitates the replacement of the DRAM package, resulting in potentially better and less expensive repairability. The two chips also share the same GPU and Neural Engine, at least on paper.
This is where Apple’s A18 and A18 Pro SoCs are different
That said, the die shots of both Apple A18 SoCs reveal a key area where they are different. The images show that the A18 Pro chip has more transistors. In SoCs, higher transistor density means more processing power. Each new generation of chip manufacturing processes seeks not only to miniaturize current hardware but to integrate more transistors in less space. In turn, a smaller chip will also result in less energy consumption.
This is on top of the already expected differences in clock speeds for the CPU and GPU. The A18 Pro even integrates an additional core in its GPU (5x cores vs. 6x cores), which will be especially noticeable in tasks related to 3D rendering or VR/AR. Additionally, the Neural Engine in Apple’s latest “Pro” chip is better, so the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max should be more efficient when running on-device AI processing.
Basically, on paper, the power difference between the Apple A18 and A18 Pro is wider than expected. Still, the standard A18 chip is already quite powerful, and most users won’t even get to squeeze out all of its potential.
X has lost a legal fight in Australia in which the company tried to avoid a $400,000 fine by claiming that Twitter no longer exists. The creative legal argument, first ArsTechnica, came amid a more than year-long dispute with Australia’s eSafety Commission.
The commission had asked the company, then known as Twitter, to provide details about its handling of child sexual exploitation on the platform last February. In its response, X failed to answer a number of questions and left “some sections entirely blank,” the commission said in a statement . As a result, the eSafety Commission slapped the company with a more than $415,000 fine for non-compliance.
It was an attempt to fight that fine that led to X’s claim that it shouldn’t be responsible since Twitter had “ceased to exist.” From the court filing:
X Corp submitted that, on and from 15 March 2023, Twitter Inc ceased to be a person, and therefore ceased to be a provider of a social media service. It was submitted that Twitter Inc therefore lacked capacity to comply with the notice, and that X Corp was not obliged to prepare any report in Twitter Inc’s place, as X Corp was not the same person as the provider to whom the notice was issued.
The argument isn’t exactly new for the Elon Musk-owned entity. CEO Linda Yaccarino has also repeatedly claimed that X is a “brand new company” in a bid to avoid scrutiny. She repeated the line multiple times earlier this year at a Senate hearing on child safety issues.
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Australia federal Judge Michael Wheelahan, however, found the claim unconvincing, saying that X’s argument required “leaps in logic that were not supported by adequate explanation.” X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In , eSafety Commissioner Inman Grant cheered the decision. “Had X Corp’s argument been accepted by the Court it could have set the concerning precedent that a foreign company’s merger with another foreign company might enable it to avoid regulatory obligations in Australia,” Grant said.
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