A group of AI researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have developed an advanced tool that can solve Google’s CAPTCHA system with 100% accuracy, raising serious concerns about the future of CAPTCHA-based security.
CAPTCHA, an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart,” has been a primary defense mechanism against bots for years, with Google’s reCAPTCHA being the most widely used.
This system uses image-based challenges and tracks user behavior to differentiate between humans and machines, however, advances in AI have led to these systems becoming increasingly vulnerable.
The CAPTCHA race is on
Andreas Plesner, Tobias Vontobel and Roger Wattenhofer recently modified the You Only Look Once (YOLO) image-processing model, successfully solving Google’s reCAPTCHAv2 human-testing system. The study they conducted focused on evaluating the effectiveness of reCAPTCHAv2, which has become a critical part of website security by blocking automated bots from accessing forms, purchasing products, or participating in online interactions.
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This project revealed that the modified YOLO-based model achieved a 100% success rate in solving reCAPTCHAv2 image challenges, compared to earlier systems that only managed success rates of 68-71%. Additionally, the researchers found that bots required roughly the same number of challenges to solve CAPTCHAs as human users, leading to doubts about the system’s reliability in distinguishing between bots and real people. It was also discovered that reCAPTCHAv2 depends heavily on browser cookies and history data to evaluate whether a user is human, meaning that bots can bypass security features if they appear to have human-like browsing behavior.
As AI technology continues to evolve, the boundary between human and machine intelligence narrows. CAPTCHAs, designed to be solvable by humans but difficult for bots, may soon be rendered obsolete. This research underscores the challenge of creating new CAPTCHA systems that can outpace AI’s rapid advancement or the need to explore alternative forms of human verification.
The study, available on the arXiv preprint server, calls for the development of future CAPTCHA systems capable of adapting to AI advancements or the exploration of alternative methods of human verification. It also emphasizes the need for further research into refining datasets, improving image segmentation, and examining the triggers that activate blocking measures in automated CAPTCHA-solving systems.
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These findings are significant because they point to an urgent need for innovation in digital security. As AI continues to progress, the traditional methods of distinguishing humans from machines become less reliable, forcing the tech industry to rethink security protocols and human verification methods in the near future.
The satellites have already been enabled and started broadcasting emergency alerts to cell phones on all networks in North Carolina. In addition, we may test basic texting (SMS) capabilities for most cell phones on the T-Mobile network in North Carolina.
SpaceX’s direct-to-cell constellation has not been fully deployed, so all services will be delivered on a best-effort basis.
It’s time for your guide to today’s Wordle answer, featuring my commentary on the latest puzzle, plus a selection of hints designed to help you keep your streak going.
Don’t think you need any clues for Wordle today? No problem, just skip to my daily column. But remember: failure in this game is only ever six guesses away.
Want more word-based fun? My Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, and you can also take a look at my NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for my verdict on two of the New York Times’ other brainteasers.
SPOILER WARNING: Today’s Wordle answer and hints are below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to see them.
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Your Wordle expert
Your Wordle expert
Marc McLaren
Wordle hints (game #1205) – clue #1 – Vowels
How many vowels does today’s Wordle have?
• Wordle today has vowels in two places*.
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* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Wordle hints (game #1205) – clue #2 – first letter
What letter does today’s Wordle begin with?
• The first letter in today’s Wordle answer is L.
L is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter in Wordle. Despite being the sixth most common letter overall, it’s only ranked 12th at the beginning of a word.
• There are no repeated letters in today’s Wordle.
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Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it’s still more likely that a Wordle doesn’t have one.
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Wordle hints (game #1205) – clue #4 – ending letter
What letter does today’s Wordle end with?
• The last letter in today’s Wordle is R.
R is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – it’s actually the 4th most common there, behind E, Y and T.
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Wordle hints (game #1205) – clue #5 – last chance
Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here’s an extra one for game #1205.
Today’s Wordle answer is a drink.
If you just want to know today’s Wordle answer now, simply scroll down – but I’d always recommend trying to solve it on your own first. We’ve got lots of Wordle tips and tricks to help you, including a guide to the best Wordle start words.
If you don’t want to know today’s answer then DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER BECAUSE IT IS PRINTED BELOW. So don’t say you weren’t warned!
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1205)
NYT average score: 4.7
My score: 3
WordleBot’s score: 4
Best start word performance*: LEAST, LEANT (14 remaining answers)
My start word performance: ECLAT (63)
* From WordleBot’s Top 20 start words
Today’s Wordle answer (game #1205) is… LAGER.
As I’ve said many times, ER words are very common in Wordle. There are 141 of them, which means you’d expect to get one every 16 games or so. And indeed, they do usually crop up every couple of weeks. It’s very rare to get two in a row, though; it happened in April this year, with LASER and ROVER, in July 2023 with COWER and ENTER, in November 2021 with FINER and SURER, and that’s it.
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To that list you can now add another entry, with today’s LAGER following yesterday’s MINER. What’s more, at the time of writing this one is even harder than the previous example – WordleBot says it has an average score of 4.7, against 4.2 for MINER.
That extra difficulty may be down to nothing more than the fact that L and G are less common in their respective positions than M and N; as my analysis of every Wordle answer shows, L appears 87 times at the start of a word, but M is at 107, while N (137) is way ahead of G (67) in the middle. Or it could be that lots of people guessed LATER, LAYER, LASER, PAGER and WAGER before LAGER, whereas with MINER there are (slightly) fewer alternatives; LINER, FINER, DINER and MISER are all I can think of.
Either way, it appears to be causing more trouble than yesterday’s did so far, although it is early days, so that average may come down.
I had a rather good time of it myself. My random opener was the uncommon ECLAT, which gave me three yellows, and while it still left 63 words, that was a lot better than the 600+ I had yesterday.
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Stupidly, I didn’t think to play for an ER word, a mistake that could have come back to haunt me. Instead, I went down the -LA-E route: BLARE, GLARE, FLARE, BLAZE, FLAKE and so on. I played BLARE and though I added an R into the mix, the other three letters all stayed yellow too. At that point I realized my mistake, so had a look at the board to see what ER words could be left. I found three, which was one fewer than the number WordleBot later came up: LAGER, LAYER and LASER. The ‘bot also had LAMER.
Fortunately, I remembered that LASER had been a past Wordle answer (as mentioned above, it appeared in April) and had a hunch that LAYER had too; it had – game #564 in January 2023. With that in mind I player LAGER next and scored a 3/6.
In a different time zone where it’s still Saturday? Don’t worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1204, too.
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Wordle yesterday had vowels in two places.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
The first letter in yesterday’s Wordle answer was M.
M is a middling letter when it comes to starting a word. It sits 10th in the rankings, with 107 occurrences in the 2,309 answers.
There were no repeated letters in yesterday’s Wordle.
Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it’s still more likely that a Wordle doesn’t have one.
The last letter in yesterday’s Wordle was R.
R is a very common letter to end a Wordle answer – it’s actually the 4th most common there, behind E, Y and T.
Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here’s an extra one for game #1205.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer works underground.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer (game #1204)
NYT average score: 4.2
My score: 4
WordleBot’s score: 4
Best start word performance*: SANER (11 remaining answers)
Two ER words in week, then? And another difficult one, with an average score of 4.2. That’s a lot lower than Sunday’s RIDER, which was at 4.6, but then again that had a repeated letter in it, whereas MINER doesn’t.
The challenge here, as always with an ER word, is to narrow down the many, many options – because there are 141 of these answers. And to make matters worse, there are a multitude of different patterns to them. Most have a consonant-vowel-consonant format, sure, but those vowels could be any of the five, and those consonants could be almost any of the 26. Is it LINER? Or POKER? Or WAGER? Or METER? Does it have repeated letters, like RUDER or PARER? Does it start with a vowel, like ELDER or OWNER? The possibilities are… well, not endless, but many.
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Identifying that it’s an ER word is the first task, and one that was certainly foremost in my mind once I got a yellow E on THETA, my random start word. So I played LOSER to see if my hunch was right, and it was; that reduced my shortlist from 604 to 46, so a big drop but I still had lots to do.
There was no way I was going to try to solve it with so many words to choose from, so instead I played DENIM next. You might wonder why I included the E in the second position given that it was already green in the fourth slot, but that was in case it was a word like NEVER or NEWER. The other four letters were all among the most common ones that I hadn’t yet played.
DENIM was a “terrific choice”, said WordleBot, and very successful – it gave me green N, yellow I and yellow M and reduced those 46 options to only one. That was MINER, and I played it next for my 4/6.
Wordle answers: The past 50
I’ve been playing Wordle every day for more than two years now and have tracked all of the previous answers so I can help you improve your game. Here are the last 50 solutions starting with yesterday’s answer, or check out my past Wordle answers page for the full list.
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Wordle #1204, Saturday 5 October: MINER
Wordle #1203, Friday 4 October: TITLE
Wordle #1202, Thursday 3 October: WAGON
Wordle #1201, Wednesday 2 October: SHELL
Wordle #1200, Tuesday 1 October: MODEM
Wordle #1199, Monday 30 September: CLOUD
Wordle #1198, Sunday 29 September: RIDER
Wordle #1197, Saturday 28 September: BRAIN
Wordle #1196, Friday 27 September: FAITH
Wordle #1195, Thursday 26 September: THANK
Wordle #1194, Wednesday 25 September: TORCH
Wordle #1193, Tuesday 24 September: HANDY
Wordle #1192, Monday 23 September: STEAM
Wordle #1191, Sunday 22 September: TEACH
Wordle #1190, Saturday 21 September: SEVEN
Wordle #1189, Friday 20 September: SMOKE
Wordle #1188, Thursday 19 September: PRESS
Wordle #1187, Wednesday 18 September: FULLY
Wordle #1186, Tuesday 17 September: BEAUT
Wordle #1185, Monday 16 September: HONEY
Wordle #1184, Sunday 15 September: RECUR
Wordle #1183, Saturday 14 September: BROAD
Wordle #1182, Friday 13 September: HARSH
Wordle #1181, Thursday 12 September: BRASS
Wordle #1180, Wednesday 11 September: AISLE
Wordle #1179, Tuesday 10 September: REBEL
Wordle #1178, Monday 9 September: DEBIT
Wordle #1177, Sunday 8 September: DRAWN
Wordle #1176, Saturday 7 September: OWNER
Wordle #1175, Friday 6 September: RERUN
Wordle #1174, Thursday 5 September: WIDEN
Wordle #1173, Wednesday 4 September: STERN
Wordle #1172, Tuesday 3 September: FAINT
Wordle #1171, Monday 2 September: CAMEL
Wordle #1170, Sunday 1 September: MUSHY
Wordle #1169, Saturday 31 August: SPOUT
Wordle #1168, Friday 30 August: KNAVE
Wordle #1167, Thursday 29 August: FLUNK
Wordle #1166, Wednesday 28 August: LITHE
Wordle #1165, Tuesday 27 August: CROWN
Wordle #1164, Monday 26 August: STAKE
Wordle #1163, Sunday 25 August: SKATE
Wordle #1162, Saturday 24 August: FILET
Wordle #1161, Friday 23 August: LEECH
Wordle #1160, Thursday 22 August: BRUTE
Wordle #1159, Wednesday 21 August: MULCH
Wordle #1158, Tuesday 20 August: DELAY
Wordle #1157, Monday 19 August: METER
Wordle #1156, Sunday 18 August: LANKY
Wordle #1155, Saturday 17 August: STORM
What is Wordle?
If you’re on this page then you almost certainly know what Wordle is already, and indeed have probably been playing it for a while. And even if you’ve not been playing it, you must surely have heard of it by now, because it’s the viral word game phenomenon that took the world by storm last year and is still going strong in 2024.
We’ve got a full guide to the game in our What is Wordle page, but if you just want a refresher then here are the basics.
What is Wordle?
Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day. You get six guesses, with each one revealing a little more information. If one of the letters in your guess is in the answer and in the right place, it turns green. If it’s in the answer but in the wrong place, it turns yellow. And if it’s not in the answer at all it turns gray. Simple, eh?
It’s played online via the Wordle website or the New York Times’ Crossword app (iOS / Android), and is entirely free.
Crucially, the answer is the same for everyone each day, meaning that you’re competing against the rest of the world, rather than just against yourself or the game. The puzzle then resets each day at midnight in your local time, giving you a new challenge, and the chance to extend your streak.
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What are the Wordle rules?
The rules of Wordle are pretty straightforward, but with a couple of curveballs thrown in for good measure.
1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green.
2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow.
3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray.
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4. Answers are never plural.
5. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green.
6. Each guess must be a valid word in Wordle’s dictionary. You can’t guess ABCDE, for instance.
7. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses unless you play on Hard mode.
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8. You have six guesses to solve the Wordle.
9. You must complete the daily Wordle before midnight in your timezone.
10. All answers are drawn from Wordle’s list of 2,309 solutions. However…
11. Wordle will accept a wider pool of words as guesses – some 10,000 of them. For instance, you can guess a plural such as WORDS. It definitely won’t be right (see point 4 above), but Wordle will accept it as a guess.
Requirements for AI training and machine learning is growing exponentially. Supermicro provides the accelerated compute infrastructure for increasing the performance of AI training by 9 times over current products available.
A new era in Windows computing is here, built around Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC initiative and a few new chipsets. While the most hype is around artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and performance thanks to faster Neural Processing Units (NPUs), the biggest changes today are in performance and battery life. And that’s a good thing for Windows, because the platform has been struggling against Apple’s Silicon MacBooks that have very good performance and much better efficiency.
The new chipsets include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300, and Intel’s Lunar Lake. Each chipset has an NPU that exceeds Microsoft’s 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) requirement, but while AMD focuses on performance, both Qualcomm and Intel are focused on efficiency. So, how does each chipset rank?
It’s still early, and so our review database isn’t fully fleshed out. That’s particularly true with Lunar Lake, as we’ve only reviewed two machines so far and Intel hasn’t rolled out the entire lineup. I’m going to focus on CPU performance here because none of the integrated GPUs in these chipsets are meaningful upgrades over their predecessors. That is, maybe they’re faster, but they’re not as fast as even entry-level discrete GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050.
None of them make for good gaming or creator laptops unless they feature discrete graphics. I’m also not going to talk about AI performance with the faster NPUs because, frankly, the benchmarks just aren’t there yet. And, discrete GPUs will be the performance champs regardless, with NPUs offering more efficient on-device AI rather than superfast AI performance.
Right now, AMD is in the lead among the chipsets we’ve reviewed. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset is very fast at CPU-intensive tasks, particularly in its multi-core performance. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite comes in a close second. Intel’s Core Ultra 7 285V comes in last place, but notably, it’s essentially a low-power version of the Lunar Lake lineup and, as we’ll see, it’s a lot stronger in efficiency than sheer performance.
Specifications are important here. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset has 12 cores and 24 threads, running at up to 5.1GHz. It’s a 28-watt chip that’s configurable between 15 watts and 54W, making it the most power-hungry of the new chipsets. Its 12 cores are apportioned between four full-size Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c cores that are more compact, but just as fast. So, it doesn’t have low-power cores. There are other versions of the chipset, but we’ve only reviewed the HX 370. The other major variant is the Ryzen AI 9 365 with 10 cores and 20 threads running at up to 5GHz.
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The Qualcomm Snapdragon X has several versions that we’ve tested, including variations of the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chipsets. The graphic below provides information on the full lineup. Qualcomm doesn’t publish the thermal design power (TDP), but from various sources, it varies from 23 watts for the Snapdragon X Plus to 45 watts nominal (up to 80 watts) for the Snapdragon X Elite. The efficiency with these chips is apparently highly variable based on how demanding the task is in a way that Lunar Lake and Apple’s M3 chipsets are not.
Intel Lunar Lake also has several iterations, With the Core Ultra 5 and 7 Series 2 versions running at a base TDP of 17 watts and the Core Ultra 9 Series 2 at a base TDP of 30 watts. Each chipset is configurable between 17W and 37W. Lunar Lake is the most direct replacement for Intel’s U-series Meteor Lake chipsets that runs at 15 watts. As you can see below, the 8-core (four Performance and four Low Power Efficient), 8-thread chipsets aren’t as fast as Intel’s Meteor Lake H-series chips that run aground 28W. Intel’s mobile Arrow Lake chipsets will take over there with, presumably, higher performance. And as we’ll see below, Lunar Lake does succeed in being more efficient.
It’s important to mention Apple’s M3 chipset as well, given that it’s the performance-efficiency leader that these Windows chipsets — at least Intel’s and Qualcomm’s — are aimed at defeating. For our purposes, we’re mostly talking about the base M3, which comes in both 8-core CPU/8-core GPU and 8-core/10-core GPU versions. Apple doesn’t publish much detailed information on things like TDP and clock speeds, but suffice it to say that the M3 offers a very solid combination of performance and efficiency. I’m only including those chipsets aimed at thin-and-light laptops, which excludes Apple’s M3 Pro and Max and Intel’s faster Meteor Lake chipsets.
From the laptops we’ve tested so far, the clear performance leaders are the AMD and Qualcomm chipsets. Intel’s Lunar Lake is a step up from Meteor Lake U-series, but it’s not impressive among today’s leaders. Apple’s M3 chipset is quick enough and it leads in single-core performance. The M4 will be faster yet.
As mentioned above, efficiency is the name of the game, at least for Qualcomm and Intel. That’s where Apple Silicon has led the way, and where Windows laptops have lagged the most. Looking at early results, it looks like Intel’s Lunar Lake might indeed win out against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, but not quite against Apple’s M3. And the M4 is likely to be even more efficient.
Looking at this data, we see that the Asus Zenbook S 14 with the Intel Core Ultra 7 is the best overall performer in terms of battery life. I’ve been in touch with Asus and it’s possible that my ExpertBook P5 review unit had a problem that showed up in its web-browsing battery life. I’ll reserve judgment and update this information when I have a chance to test a new unit. I’ll also update this information as we add new machines to our database, and it’s important to note that these results don’t adjust for differences in display technology.
Web browsing
Video
Cinebench R24
Asus Zenbook S 14 (Core Ultra 7 258V)
16 hours, 47 minutes
18 hours, 35 minutes
3 hours, 33 minutes
Asus ExpertBook P5 (Core Ultra 7 258V)
8 hours, 54 minutes
16 hours, 29 minutes
2 hours, 15 minutes
HP Omnibook X (Snapdragon X Elite)
13 hours, 37 minutes
22 hours, 4 minutes
1 hour, 52 minutes
Asus Vivobook S 15 (Snapdragon X Plus)
13 hours, 10 minutes
16 hours, 19 minutes
N/A
Asus ProArt PX13 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370)
8 hours, 7 minutes
11 hours, 12 minutes
1 hour, 12 minutes
HP Spectre x360 14 (Core Ultra 7 155H)
8 hours, 6 minutes
13 hours, 3 minutes
N/A
Asus Zenbook S 14 (Core Ultra 7 155U)
8 hours, 45 minutes
12 hours, 25 minute
N/A
Apple MacBook Air (Apple M3)
19 hours, 38 minutes
19 hours, 39 minutes
3 hours, 27 minutes
But going by the Zenbook S 14, which uses an OLED display, we see consistently excellent battery life not only in the least demanding video-looping test, as with Qualcomm, but also when running more intensive tasks like web browsing (still not very demanding) and churning through the Cinebench R24 multi-core benchmark. The AMD chipset isn’t meant to break any ground in efficiency, and so it’s in last place. And Intel’s Meteor Lake chipsets have performed similarly.
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That leaves the Apple M3 chipset in first place, although not by as significant a margin, and Qualcomm showing that it’s most efficient when its CPU isn’t being pushed very hard. Apple’s lead will likely increase when the M4 MacBook Air is introduced, but Lunar Lake is by far the strongest chipset yet for Windows laptops.
This isn’t the entire story, not by a long shot. We’ll need to continue gathering data as we review more laptops with each chipset and more chipsets, like Intel’s Arrow Lake mobile and Apple’s M4, roll out. For now, Windows laptops have never been better, and Intel is mostly leading that charge when it comes to the important element of battery life.
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