Latest news with #puzzlegames
Forbes
18-07-2025
- Climate
- Forbes
Today's NYT Strands Puzzle: Hints, Spangram And Answers For Saturday, July 19th
Today's NYT Strands hints and answers Looking for Friday's Strands hints, spangram and answers? You can find them here: It's Saturday at last and I, dearest Strandistrians, have returned! I've been out of the rotation for the past two weeks as my colleagues Kris Holt and Paul Tassi have tackled these Strands guides, but now I'm back. With a vengeance. Let's uncover some words! Strands is the newest game in the New York Times' stable of puzzle games. It's a fun twist on classic word search games. Every day we're given a new theme and then tasked with uncovering all the words on the grid that fit that theme, including a spangram that spans two sides of the board. One of these words is the spangram which crosses from one side of the grid to another and reveals even more about the day's theme. Spoilers ahead. Today's Strands Hints Read on for today's theme and some hints to help you uncover today's words. Instead of giving you the first two letters of each word, today I'm giving out three hints instead of two. Today's Theme: Hot enough for ya? FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Hint: Words you'd describe warm places with, specifically this season. Clue: Okay, warm is an understatement. Here are the first two letters of each word: Remember, spoilers ahead! What Are Today's Strands Answers? Today's spangram is: SUMMERWEATHER Here's the full list of words: Here's the completed Strands grid: Today's Strands I just returned from a trip to Phoenix, AZ so 'hot enough for ya?' is rather timely. Of course, Phoenix is not MUGGY in the slightest. Nor would I use the word BALMY to describe that desert city. STICKY? Yes. SCORCHING? Absolutely. SWELTERING? You're damn right it is. But with a pool, it's also quite lovely. And air-conditioning, of course. This was a pretty easy Strands. How did you do on your Strands today? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook. Be sure to check out my blog for my daily Wordle guides as well as all my other writing about TV shows, streaming guides, movie reviews, video game coverage and much more. Thanks for stopping by!
Forbes
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Meet The Rubik's Cube That's Part Console, Part Puzzle, And All Chaos
Behold, the Rubik's WOWCube: the console-puzzle hybrid you never asked for, but must try. Occasionally, a piece of gaming hardware comes along that inevitably makes you gawp. It might be ridiculous, like the Resident Evil chainsaw controller, or frankly unplayable, such as the 'skateboard' for Tony Hawk: Ride. Sometimes, you get an invention you didn't ask for, but you still want to try, like the Rubik's WOWCube. There's a lot to unpack with this one. However, if this Frankenconsole manages to stick the landing and resonate with players on both technical and interactive levels, it could be a real game-changer — even if it's only in specific, self-devised circumstances. The Rubik's WOWCube, developed between Spin Master and Cubios, combines a handheld console with your classic Rubik's Cube — at least, one with only four subdivisions per side, rather than your classic nine. With it, the device aims to deliver a tactile, 3D puzzle experience with the functionality of a console, albeit one where games are played across all six sides. This unusual device features 12 interconnected mini-cubes, each side equipped with digital screens and motion sensors. Players can twist, shake, and spin it to interact with games like Space Invaders, Cut the Rope, and, best of all, 2048 — which in retrospect, feels like it was accidentally built for this — on the cube's weird hardware. It's weird, but it's obviously ggot potential. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Admittedly, on a gaming level, my personal excitement is entirely limited to 2048 right now — I'm a member of the 65536 club, to both my credit and detriment, but Cut the Rope was dull back in my iPhone 3GS days. Still, what's apparent about the WOWCube is the 'art of the possible' that it promises. One major cornerstone of the device is that it's an open platform for developers to create and upload custom apps. Those with a killer idea receive a dedicated SDK and developer portal, allowing indie developers and studios alike to explore physics-based design in three-dimensional space. To top it all off, the Rubik's WOWCube will also be certified by which adds an extra layer of credibility for the device as something that isn't just for entertainment, but as a tool for cognitive development and learning — the type of thing you could see in schools in the months and years after its release. If you already have ideas of what you could do with this, think about how you can adapt a national curriculum around it, because this could be a license to print money. There are also product shots like this showing how you can keep on top of stock prices and the ... More weather, but there's no chance you'd use this for that. In any case, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to adapt some other classic games for it. Twisting to turn left or right, or rolling to go straight ahead, would be perfect for Dungeon Master. Hell, there's every reason someone can port DOOM to it — at this point, thanks to the meme, I genuinely think my six-year-old Maltipoo could run DOOM. Pre-orders are open later this year, and test versions are already kicking around in the wild, so it's gonna happen at some point. Check out the official Rubik's WOWCube website if you want to register your interest, or check out the ongoing history of the WOWCube, where you can also learn about why it's called the WOWCube (spoiler alert: it may or may not have been because people 'exclaimed WOW!'). Trust me, I really have to review this one. It's too weird not to — watch this space.
The Verge
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The Atlantic is making a big push into games
Daily puzzle games are seemingly everywhere right now, and starting today, you'll be able to add a new stop to your puzzle rotation: The Atlantic. The publication is launching a new hub for its growing game offerings, including already available games like Bracket City and Caleb's Inferno Crossword Puzzle, as well as some new puzzles. You'll be able to access the hub on both the web and in The Atlantic's app. Caleb Madison, The Atlantic's director of games, gave The Verge a demo of most of the games available in the hub ahead of today's launch: Bracket City, which The Atlantic licensed earlier this year, requires you to solve clues nested in brackets that eventually resolve into a fun fact about that day in history. Stacks, a new game, is kind of like Tetris meets Wordle, Madison says. You have a bank of words that you have to place in the correct order, on top of letters already on the board, to form other words. In Fluxis, another new game, you try to figure out words that build off the previous word and incorporate some kind of characteristic. Madison showed me an example of needing to build an adjective off the word 'checkerboard' — he went with 'arduous.' Caleb's Inferno Crossword Puzzle, which is already included in the monthly Atlantic magazine and available online, is last game Madison showed me. Caleb's crossword is a narrow rectangle instead of a square, but as you move farther down the puzzle, the clues get more difficult to solve. Madison doesn't necessarily see The Atlantic's games as replacing your visits to other daily puzzles. 'I think people have a pretty ravenous diet for new games, so I don't think coming to The Atlantic precludes any of these other amazing games that are at The New York Times or Apple News or LinkedIn,' Madison says. 'What I feel like The Atlantic has to offer that's different from those publications is a little bit more of a bespoken, artisanal aesthetic.' Madison also tries to bring an 'aesthetic narrative component' to games to help them feel 'immersive and special.' Bracket City, for example, has some city-themed elements sprinkled throughout, like the 'fan mail' email being mayor@ Like with The New York Times, some aspects of The Atlantic 's games will only be available if you're a paid subscriber. Bracket City and all of its archives are free. The full archives for Stacks, Fluxis, and The Atlantic 's daily mini crossword will be behind a paywall, however; nonsubscribers will only have access to the three most recent puzzles for those games. All of the Caleb's Inferno crossword puzzles are exclusive to subscribers. Madison says he has 'a lot of plans' for more games, including long-form games of some kind. 'I'm trying to make no assumptions as to what that would look like and just forge forward creatively to see what a more layered day-to-day experience would be like.' He didn't want to give anything specific away, but he says, 'I am excited to innovate in the game space and bring unique and authentic, long-form game experiences to The Atlantic users and to people online.'
RNZ News
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
How storytelling computer games is changing literature
media arts about 1 hour ago You find yourself adrift, far, far below the ocean's surface in an octagonal ball-shaped subversive submarine. Deep sea divers have come to your aid. They have a home base on the seafloor, but are fighting over whether to take you to their shadowy leader, called The Mind, or to the dangerous world of the surface. Time is ticking: the horror of the attention of a krake, a giant sea monster await those who dally. You have to try and get this bunch of divers to pull in the same direction. Sub-Verge is a tense narrative puzzle based computer game, which debuted at narrative video game festival LudoNarraCon this month. It's a game full of characters, dialogue and story twists. And its creator is Zach Dodson, who has even authored a prequel novella called Subtle Mind. An Associate Professor at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington Dodson leads a newly launched Design & Visual Narrative programme bringing together students from film, music, theatre, and design. He also teaches the Writing for Games course in the School of Design and co-founded what is called the Visual Narrative Lab at Te Herenga Waka. With his teaching and his own independent game studio he aims to push the boundaries of narrative-driven games. That started with actual books. He wrote, designed and illustrated what he calls an 'illuminated novel' Bats of the Republic which in recognising as one of the books of 2015 The Washington Post called "a glorious demonstration of what old-fashioned paper can still do in the hands of a creative genius." Dodson is part of the drive in New Zealand for the development of innovation in game development, with funding received from New Zealand Film Commission and CODE NZ towards research into interactive dialogue systems. Kuu is a new moonbase based game that started as a book (Zach shows you through it here) and it was recently pitched to publishers at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco as part of Representing Games, a group of eight Aotearoa New Zealand design studios funded by CODE NZ to generate business opportunities for the country.
