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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 #488) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• NERVE
• SPLASH
• EXTRA
• RELISH
• GRAVY
• TREASURE
• SAUCE
• DIP
• DIVE
• BONUS
• VALUE
• BRASS
• FROSTING
• CHEEK
• SWIM
• SAVOR

NYT Connections today (game #488) - hint #1 - group hints

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

• Yellow: Really like
• Green: Don't forget the water wings
• Blue: Something more
• Purple: Impertinence

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 #488) - hint #2 - group answers

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

• YELLOW: CHERISH
• GREEN: QUICK JUMP IN THE POOL
• BLUE: ADDITIONAL BENEFIT
• PURPLE: BRASHNESS

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

NYT Connections today (game #488) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #488, are…

• YELLOW: CHERISH RELISH, SAVOR, TREASURE, VALUE
• GREEN: QUICK JUMP IN THE POOL DIP, DIVE, SPLASH, SWIM
• BLUE: ADDITIONAL BENEFIT BONUS, EXTRA, FROSTING, GRAVY
• PURPLE: BRASHNESS BRASS, CHEEK, NERVE, SAUCE

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

It's always nice to finish the week with a simple Connections game, so I greatly enjoyed today's instalment. It wasn't so easy that I didn't have to use my brain at all – it's never that straightforward – but it wasn't one where any of the individual groups were particularly complex, and there weren't too many red herrings.

There were some of course; I nearly put one together with SAUCE, DIP, RELISH and GRAVY, which might have made some kind of food-based group, albeit not a particularly consistent one. But that aside they were all fairly obvious, and all were essentially synonyms, with no complicated hidden connections to worry about.

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

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Thursday, 10 October, game #487)

• YELLOW: BODY PARTS ARM, EYE, HIP, LEG
• GREEN: COOL, IN ’80S SLANG BAD, FLY, ILL, RAD
• BLUE: MOVIES BIG, ELF, HER, SAW
• PURPLE: WORDS IN “DO-RE-MI” DOE, FAR, SEW, TEA

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.

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.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games.

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

NYT Strands today (game #222) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Let's experiment

NYT Strands today (game #222) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• PEEL
• BLARE
• BARE
• MEET
• MOTE
• MORE

NYT Strands today (game #222) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• Elemental place

NYT Strands today (game #222) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First: bottom, 4th column

Last: top, 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 #222) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #222, are…

• BEAKER
• FLASK
• PIPETTE
• GOGGLES
• THERMOMETER
• SPANGRAM: CHEMISTRYLAB

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

Ah, the CHEMISTRYLAB. The pop of hydrogen/oxygen, the flash of magnesium, the smell of burning hair from someone getting too close to the Bunsen burner… those were the days. Fortunately, there's a lot less risk involved in solving Strands. And that's particularly true today, because it's likely to be an easy one for most people.

The second I saw the theme clue of 'Let's experiment' I thought 'Science!' and knew what would be expected here. And I was right, with BEAKER and FLASK, my first two, confirming the concept. After that it was a simple matter of thinking back to those days spent messing around with potassium, phosphorus and all the other chemicals I should probably never have been allowed near at the age of 13…

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

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday 10 October, game #221)

• JUMBLE
• SUDOKU
• JIGSAW
• MAZE
• CROSSWORD
• CRYPTOGRAM
• SPANGRAM: PUZZLES

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.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now nearly 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles.

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

Quordle today (game #991) - hint #1 - Vowels How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* 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).

Quordle today (game #991) - hint #2 - repeated letters Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 0.

Quordle today (game #991) - hint #3 - uncommon letters Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• Yes. One of Q, Z, X or J appears among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #991) - hint #4 - starting letters (1) Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #991) - hint #5 - starting letters (2) What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• R

• A

• P

• Z

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

Quordle today (game #991) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #991, are…

• RINSE
• ANIME
• PUSHY
• ZEBRA

I don't know about you but I love the idea of a PUSHY ZEBRA. You know, moving all the other animals away from the watering hole so it can have it all to itself, that kind of thing. I'm sure there's a Pixar animation in there somewhere. But I digress. ZEBRA is arguably the hardest word in today's Quordle, although ANIME does give it some competition. It not only starts with a very uncommon letter in the form of Z, but also has a B in an unusual spot (B tends to start words and not much else). ANIME, meanwhile, is formed of mostly common letters (M is the slight outlier), but caused a lot of trouble when it was a Wordle answer a while ago. Overall: tricky day, folks.

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

Daily Sequence today (game #991) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #991, are…

• FETCH
• WARTY
• FROCK
• ABATE

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #990, Thursday 10 October: UNTIL, MARSH, METAL, WINDY
• Quordle #989, Wednesday 9 October: TRIAL, HUSKY, DOWNY, TRADE
• Quordle #988, Tuesday 8 October: TROUT, HATER, BARGE, DOZEN
• Quordle #987, Monday 7 October: CAULK, HALVE, APING, HEATH
• Quordle #986, Sunday 6 October: FUDGE, TENOR, BEGAT, ROUSE
• Quordle #985, Saturday 5 October: ELECT, CROAK, FRISK, JAUNT
• Quordle #984, Friday 4 October: ELFIN, GRAIL, PATIO, RECAP
• Quordle #983, Thursday 3 October: TENTH, REMIT, CURVE, TOAST
• Quordle #982, Wednesday 2 October: ARGUE, CRANE, TOKEN, PRINT
• Quordle #981, Tuesday 1 October: FRILL, MADLY, GRANT, NYLON
• Quordle #980, Monday 30 September: CRUSH, TARDY, TEACH, STUMP
• Quordle #979, Sunday 29 September: SERIF, BORNE, WRITE, SLEEK
• Quordle #978, Saturday 28 September: BUSHY, CIVIC, SNOUT, EQUIP
• Quordle #977, Friday 27 September: GUEST, CHASM, ROOST, BASAL
• Quordle #976, Thursday 26 September: STAGE, VOGUE, CLUMP, HEATH
• Quordle #975, Wednesday 25 September: UMBRA, DADDY, GLAZE, PRANK
• Quordle #974, Tuesday 24 September: SPACE, INNER, SPAWN, BEGAT
• Quordle #973, Monday 23 September: GUILT, STERN, ANNEX, FIELD
• Quordle #972, Sunday 22 September: ZESTY, MEATY, ALIVE, DRAWN
• Quordle #971, Saturday 21 September: VITAL, FRAIL, SPEAR, EERIE

A queen mattress is a popular mattress size for couples, all sleeping positions and body types. Here are the best queen mattresses for all sleepers.

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Anyone who has tried to find the best hard drives at massive sizes has likely come across the Seagate's Exos range, which can go up to 32TB (yes, you read that right). 

Announced back in January 2024, the Seagate Exos Mozaic 3+ is one of the largest hard drives money can buy, and the beauty of it is that anyone can use the Exos series with their own machine. These aren't just designed for hyperscale data center operators and the like. 

Building a 32TB hard drive isn't easy, and Seagate had to leverage a lot of new technologies to get there, especially for a reasonable price point. The most notable is using Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), which allows hard disk tracks to overlap, creating a hard drive with higher densities. 

Most hard drives use Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR), which has been the standard for a number of years, but the tech simply would not be able to create a 32TB hard drive that wasn't massive. 

Seagate used 3TB platter, with an areal density of 1.742 Tb per square inch, and makes use of SMR or, for hyperscale customers, Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). The precious record was Western Digital Gold, which hit 24TB. 

(Image credit: Seagate) Watch out for refurb Exos

But beware: we've recently noticed hundreds of refurbished Seagate 28TB SMR hard disk drives that have surfaced online at pretty unbelievable prices. While this might sound good in principle, the problem is that a refurbished product has very likely been sent back by its owners, and therefore has a fault. 

Seagate launched the Exos range in early 2024, and so there has been enough time for customers to make orders, find a fault, and send the super high-end hard drives back to the manufacturer.

Finding reliable figures for how much the Exos range costs new is difficult, but the refurbished model costing €549.99 for 28TB of storage is likely to be extremely cheap in comparison. 

What is the best massive hard drive? 

TechRadar has spent plenty of hours testing the largest SSD and hard drives on the market right now, and we found that the ExaDrive EDDCT100/EDDCS100 tops the list, with an incredible 100TB of storage on offer, as well as options on the more modest end of the spectrum. 

It's worth also shouting out the Samsung T5 EVO, which can come with up to 8TB of storage, for a pretty reasonable $450, too. The WD Elements 6TB portable HDD could also be worth checking out. 

MORE FROM TECHRADAR PRO

• We found the best external hard drives
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Researchers at Cornell University, in collaboration with the Polish Academy of Sciences, have made a major breakthrough in semiconductor technology by developing the first-ever dual-sided chip - referred to as a "dualtronic" chip - that integrates both photonic and electronic devices on a single Gallium Nitride (GaN) wafer.

This innovation could shrink device sizes, improve energy efficiency, and reduce manufacturing costs.

The GaN wafer’s unique crystal structure is key to its dual functionality. Each side of the wafer has different properties, similar to how the poles of a magnet differ. The team utilized the metal-polar (Ga-polar) side to create light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and the nitrogen-polar (N-polar) side to construct high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). By doing so, they were able to achieve a configuration where the HEMT on one side powers the LED on the other - an accomplishment never before realized in any semiconductor material.

Limited only by the imagination

The research, led by Cornell professors Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing, along with co-lead authors Len van Deurzen and Eungkyun Kim, has been published in the Nature journal.

"To our knowledge, nobody has made active devices on both sides, not even for silicon," noted co-lead author Len van Deurzen, emphasizing how this feat was possible only because of GaN's polarity-dependent properties. Traditional silicon wafers are cubic, making both sides nearly identical, which prevents such a design.

According to the researchers, this dualtronic approach could have immediate applications in making microLED displays more affordable and energy-efficient. By integrating photonic and electronic functions into a single chip, fewer components would be needed, leading to lower production costs and a smaller device footprint. This advancement could significantly impact display manufacturing, potentially making LED displays cheaper and more compact.

The technology’s potential goes even further. With the ability to use the same wafer for different functions, dualtronics could enable smartphone screens to be repurposed as antennas, supporting wireless communications directly through the display. The polarization properties of GaN and the dualtronic chip’s multifunctionality could transform not only displays but also radio frequency devices, lasers, and future 5G/6G technologies.

“A good analogy is the iPhone,” explained Debdeep Jena. “It is, of course, a phone, but it is so many other things. It’s a calculator, it’s a map, it lets you check the internet. So there’s a bit of a convergence aspect of it. I would say our first demonstration of ‘dualtronics’ in this paper is convergence of maybe two or three functionalities, but really it’s bigger than that.”

This breakthrough could reshape how semiconductor devices are designed and utilized. By eliminating the need for separate chips to handle different functions, dualtronics promises to optimize both performance and resource utilization across a variety of technologies. As the researchers point out, this development marks a significant step forward, and the potential applications are "limited only by the imagination."

More from TechRadar Pro

• How GaN is changing the future of semiconductors
• Bill Gates-backed company is building a nuclear power station
• Your iPhone 15 charger contains material with quasi super-powers — gallium nitride

Rumors about AMD’s Radeon GRE graphics cards aren’t anything new, but the latest whisperings on the tech grapevine may be revealing something big for the upcoming CES 2025 event.

According to the latest leak from well-known hardware leaker Hoang Anh Phu (reported on by PCGamesN), we could be seeing an AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE graphics card reveal during the tech trade show next year. The post leak in question lists the model name of the card with the hashtag #CES2025.

Judging from previous RX 7000-series cards, the RX 7650 GRE model name could mean that it’ll be between the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT and the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT in terms of performance. The former is in competition with the Nvidia RTX 4070 and tends to retail for $449, while the latter competes with the RTX 4060 and is usually priced at $329.

Most likely then, the RX 7650 GRE will retail between $300-$400 if it does end up being confirmed. This would put it above the Radeon RX 7600 - easily the best cheap graphics card since the RTX 3060 - in terms of price but the tradeoff would be assumed superior performance and VRAM.

The AMD RX 7650 GRE and other 2025 launches could make for a great PC gaming year

There’s a good point to be made that the GRE branding tends to be given to cards that are released in China exclusively or first. However, with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE going global after a Chinese-exclusive launch and subsequently upending the mid-range cards market, the chances of us seeing the worldwide release of the 7650 GRE (if this card really does exist) would be rather solid.

There’s also the chance that Team Red is planning on using the GRE label for new variants of its graphics cards, which lines up with the part of the leak that this particular card will debut during a Western tech trade show and not at a Chinese one. If this does end up being true, it would probably be the last of the RDNA 3 cards before RDNA 4 makes its debut.

In general, it seems like a good plan for gamers to wait until at least January 2025 before investing in a new graphics card, since not only is there this rumor but the fact that Team Red will also be launching said RDNA 4 cards next year. Team Green’s next-gen 5000-series cards are expected to launch in January as well, giving gamers even more options.

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