Technology

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Wordle hints and answers, Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #528) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• PLAY
• BAY
• STIR
• CHAIN
• TREE
• STREAM
• BARK
• RUN
• HOWL
• GARNISH
• AIR
• PYRAMID
• MUDDLE
• LADDER
• SNARL
• STRAIN

NYT Connections today (game #528) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• Yellow: Woof!
• Green: YouTube verbs
• Blue: Things you might do in a specific kind of bar
• Purple: Command structures

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #528) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: SOUND LIKE A DOG
• GREEN: BROADCAST, AS ONLINE MEDIA
• BLUE: COCKTAIL-MAKING VERBS
• PURPLE: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES, METAPHORICALLY

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #528) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #528, are…

• YELLOW: SOUND LIKE A DOG BARK, BAY, HOWL, SNARL
• GREEN: BROADCAST, AS ONLINE MEDIA AIR, PLAY, RUN, STREAM
• BLUE: COCKTAIL-MAKING VERBS GARNISH, MUDDLE, STIR, STRAIN
• PURPLE: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES, METAPHORICALLY CHAIN, LADDER, PYRAMID, TREE

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: 1 hint

I seem to be making quite the habit of guessing groups with one connection in mind, only to get it right even though the answers were all linked by something different. I had two of those today: purple and blue, although in both cases I was halfway there.

Taking purple first, I put PYRAMID, LADDER and CHAIN together as things that humans might form into. I tried MUDDLE along with them – don't judge me, it was just a guess – and when that was wrong turned to TREE, which proved to be correct. I was on the right lines: the actual connection was ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES, METAPHORICALLY.

For blue, I had a feeling that GARNISH, STIR and STRAIN went together as things you did to food, and thought maybe MUDDLE was also connected; do you muddle a salad maybe? Maybe not! But it was right anyway, though the connection was actually COCKTAIL-MAKING VERBS. Lucky me.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Tuesday, 19 November, game #527)

• YELLOW: AREA OF EXPERTISE CONCENTRATION, FIELD, FOCUS, SPECIALTY
• GREEN: WAYS TO UNLOCK A DEVICE FACE, FINGERPRINT, PASSWORD, PIN
• BLUE: PASTA SHAPES EAR, ELBOW, RIBBON, WHEEL
• PURPLE: DOUBLE ___ AGENT, DRIBBLE, JEOPARDY, STANDARD

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

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• GIMP 3.0 release date is nearly here after a long wait
• Open source image editor is a key Photoshop rival
• New logo and host of features coming for loyal users

The long-awaited release of GIMP 3.0 is coming, according to the team behind the open source Photoshop alternative.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program, previously known as the General Image Manipulation Program, unveiled a release candidate version of the platform on November 6.

“We are very excited to share the first release candidate for the long-awaited GIMP 3.0,” the developers said in a blog post announcing the release. “We’ve been hard at work since our last development update to get this ready, and we’re looking forward to everyone finally being able to see the results.”

GIMP 3.0 release

The announcement follows years of speculation over the release of the latest version of the Photoshop-style tool, with GIMP 2.0 released in March 2004.

Since then, there have been frequent updates, including GIMP 2.4X and 2.6X in 2007, 2.8X in 2022, and the most recent release, GIMP 2.10X, from 2018 until now.

The developers behind the tool said the software version is nearing completion and set to be released to the community after final testing and bug testing has been completed.

“If user feedback reveals only small and easy to fix bugs, we will solve those problems and issue the result as GIMP 3.0,” the developers said.

“However, we hope and expect a much larger audience to try out 3.0 RC1 - including many people who have only been using 2.10 up until now."

“If larger bugs and regressions are uncovered that require more substantial code changes, we may need to publish a second release candidate for further testing.”

What this means is that, providing there are no significant issues flagged by users, the release of GIMP 3.0 could be imminent, or at least within the next few months.

What to expect with GIMP 3.0

So, what can users expect to see with the new release? First off, there’s a new logo, designed in collaboration between Aryeom and other contributors.

Developers said the iconic Wilber logo, which was created by Jakub Steiner for GIMP 2.6 in 2008, remains a “fantastic logo”, but “design trends have changed a bit in the last sixteen years”.

Elsewhere, the interface will remain recognizable for many users but has been given a bit of TLC, enabling it to better scale to high-resolution displays. A raft of icons have also been converted to scalable vector graphics as well, improving the overall quality and scalability of assets.

“One of the major improvements from the GTK3 port is that the vector UI icons now scale more cleanly based on your preference settings,” developers said.

“Our Legacy icon theme was mainly raster PNGs however, so it could not take advantage of the GTK3 scaling system. Contributor Denis Rangelov took on the extensive challenge of recreating the Legacy tool icons as SVGs.

Notably, the biggest changes in GIMP 3.0 are on the backend and will help improve plugin compatibility for users still relying on older versions of the platform.

Similarly, a public GIMP API has also been built to allow users to port GIMP 2.0 plugins and scripts to the newer version.

“Another task that had to be finished before the 3.0 release was finalizing the public API.”

“Since the API is now stable, plug-in and script developers can begin porting their 2.10 scripts based on this release.”

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• Zoom AI performance shows “leader” capabilities
• Conversational AI responses are nearly 2x faster than Microsoft Teams
• Zoom says it is committed to expanding access to AI

A recent report by software testing provider TestDevLab has claimed Zoom is leading the way when it comes to AI, good news for a company that has invested so heavily in AI recently.

The study found video conferencing software from Zoom outperforms key rivals, such as Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex, in areas like transcription accuracy, meeting summaries and conversational AI.

The news comes less than a month after Zoom announced version 2.0 of its AI Companion, which includes new capabilities like expanded context, information synthesis and the ability to take action.

Zoom claims to be better at AI than Teams, Webex

The report claimed Zoom achieved the lowest Word Error Rate (WER) in meeting transcriptions, scoring 7.40% compared with 10.16% for Webex and 11.54% for Teams, which means it has greater accuracy when it comes to keeping records.

Similarly, but with less of a distinction, Zoom outperformed Teams and Webex in terms of transcription evaluation and meeting summarization.

Speaking about the AI-generated summaries, the researchers said: “Strengths include objectivity and a clear listing of action items, while minor improvements could be made in providing a bit more context for certain terms and ensuring full completeness by covering some minor sub-discussions.”

The company also excelled in conversational AI, delivering responses in 4716.1 milliseconds on average – nearly twice as fast as Microsoft Teams (9269.9 milliseconds).

TestDevLab also analyzed prompt response stability, defined as the ability of all participants to receive a similar answer, and found that Zoom (96%) outperformed Teams (89%) and Webex (84%) by a healthy margin.

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