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President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office at noon followed by a presidential parade, signing ceremony and inaugural balls.

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That the Buckeyes and the Fighting Irish, two of the sport's most storied teams, are squaring off in the title game is a TV executive's dream — and a fitting end to the first-ever 12-team playoff.

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A trial begins Tuesday over complaints filed by Prince Harry and a senior British lawmaker against Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspapers. The trial carries high stakes on both sides of the Atlantic.

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• Half of Brits aren’t even familiar with data centers, report finds
• Three in five know they play a role in hybrid work
• Further education could increase public trust in data centers

Despite efforts to propel the country’s artificial intelligence capabilities, new research from Telehouse has revealed more than half (51%) of Brits aren’t even familiar with the term ‘data center.’

Even the people who have heard of data centers aren’t necessarily clued up on the role they play in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and even cloud storage.

Two in three (67%) don’t understand the role date centers play, and two in five (42%) are unaware of the scale of people, applications and data supported by such campuses.

British citizens aren’t clued up on data centers

The trend paints a troubling picture for Britain’s intentions to become an AI leader – Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer wants to make the UK a global leader in artificial intelligence.

In 2024, data centers became classified as Critical National Infrastructure, giving them extra protections and monitoring, and recent years have seen an increase in government focus on data centers, coinciding with AI investments and other plans to expand digital infrastructure. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner recently approved a £670 million data center project in Buckinghamshire which will occupy land on a green belt.

However, although two in three (59%) of the 2,000 UK consumers surveyed acknowledged that data centers are important for remote working, 19% are unsure how the facilities actually support their remote work.

“We realise there’s a significant knowledge gap regarding data centres and their impact on digital lives," noted Telehouse Europe EVP and GM Mark Pestridge.

Pestridge hopes education around data centers will bridge the knowledge divide and therefore increase public trust in digital infrastructure.

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The first ransomware attack took place in 1989 and was made possible by the floppy disk. It wasn’t until cryptocurrencies and ‘untraceable’ payments came along in the 2010s, however, that its prevalence as an attack method exploded.

The growth of cryptocurrency is just one of several major trends that has influenced the ransomware landscape. Elsewhere for example, international relations has played a part. Attackers and victims quite rarely live in the same country, so dealing with the criminals requires cross-border law enforcement collaboration. The US and Russia began working together to address gangs based in Russia before the Ukraine war put an end to that cooperation.

But one of the biggest influences on the state of ransomware in the relatively short period since it really arrived just over ten years ago has been cyber insurance. Though not always to the benefit of victims, years of policy changes and updated requirements for cover have seen it make organizations much more resilient in the long run.

If ransomware is a new phenomenon, so too is cyber insurance

I remember speaking to an insurance company just over ten years ago. They’d just started offering cyber insurance policies but at that point, they were yet to receive a claim.

But as the number of ransomware attacks rocketed, organizations eagerly took out cyber polices to protect themselves. Ransomware attack methods and the ransoms demanded were very different then to how they are today. In the early 2010s the most common ransomware businesses faced were low-cost, mass-market type attacks like CryptoLocker. The ransom demanded by the attackers was just a few hundred dollars.

As attacks became more common, there were significant changes in how criminals operated. ‘Ransomware as a Service’ emerged as a product, offering would-be cyber criminals, without the skills to develop malware themselves, the chance to buy an off-the-shelf kit. Attacks also became more targeted – focusing on industries with weaker cyber defenses such as manufacturing, government and healthcare, where the impact of downtime would be much higher.

Pay up, recover or fail

Historically, victims of ransomware faced a choice: pay the ransom, often hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds, usually by claiming on their cyber insurance policy, or attempt to recover themselves.

Without being able to rely on recovery methods such as backups, some businesses had no option but to pay criminals. In other instances, victims had to weigh the cost of the ransom against the cost of their own recovery, which can quickly become expensive. For example, there are the direct costs like cyber forensic experts, IT consultancies and the likely cost of overtime for your own teams. Then there are business impacts to consider such as lost income, fines from regulators and the long-term costs that come with damage to your reputation.

The majority of organizations chose to pay the ransom and subsequently fed into the vicious cycle of more attacks and more payouts.

While this is bad news for all parties, the pain was felt acutely by the cyber insurers who found suddenly that their fast-selling product was coming back to bite them and exposing them to massive losses.

The biggest problem for businesses was the fact that they weren’t addressing the root cause of attacks. Instead of taking steps to improve their defenses and put processes in place to aid recovery, they found themselves vulnerable and in a position where they had little choice but to pay a ransom.

Insurers responded in the two ways that you’d most expect in this situation: they increased the price of the product and raised their requirements to obtain cover.

When you take out home insurance for example, you answer questions about the security of your home and its various entrance points. But when it comes to obtaining cyber cover, businesses today have far more to account for.

• Cyber insurance questionnaires, once of no great depth, now assess businesses in each of the following areas: Segregation of production and backup data
• Encryption of backups
• Last date of disaster recovery testing
• Annual budget for IT and cyber security
• Whether a business has previously suffered a ransomware attack
• How quickly critical updates are deployed, and whether any software is used beyond end of life

The key difference is that insurers are taking greater care to assess whether or not the company applying for cover is secure and able to respond to a cyber-attack. For them, the best customers are those who are unlikely to make a claim. In the event that they do need to claim, the customer has the capability to respond and bring themselves back online quickly, limiting their costs and leading to a smaller payout.

Crucially, insurance companies also began discouraging payments wherever possible.

These changes had a significant impact on the state of play. Organizations improved both their preventative security measures and their ability to respond. Suddenly, businesses sought to implement immutable backups and segregation of operations and began carrying out frequent DR testing.

The resulting shift is already visible across businesses. More organizations than ever have cyber insurance but fewer are making claims. Instead, businesses are recovering themselves.

The here and now

Taking each attack in isolation, paying a ransom can seem a more attractive option. Paying can mean less downtime, less reputational damage (assuming it is kept under wraps) and a lower overall cost to the business.

Ultimately however, paying will only lead to more attacks. The ransomware problem can’t be improved in isolation, but instead requires a collaborative effort to address the benefits for attackers.

While outright bans on payment are frequently discussed by regulators, they have almost always been abandoned. The only successful ban has prevented payments to known terrorist organisations. The difficulty lies in setting a rule that is effective but doesn’t lead to businesses incurring crippling costs, failing and causing job losses. Cyber insurers originally began influencing the market by discouraging organizations from paying out, and instead encouraging them to improve their response.

Cyber insurance has succeeded where regulation has mostly failed. It has undoubtedly been the most significant positive factor in improving ransomware response and the overall cyber resilience of businesses.

We've compiled a list of the best cloud backup services.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Victor Willis of the Village People says their music is for everyone, defending the group's choice to perform at Trump's inaugural celebrations as a message of inclusivity.

(Image credit: Andrew Chin)

Cybercriminals today are consistently working to find new ways to trap potential victims. From masquerading themselves as legitimate users in a network or using new and evolving techniques to slip past detection mechanisms, the array of sophisticated tools in the arsenals of threat actors continues to grow.

And the timing of attacks is also crucial. A survey of nearly 1,000 security professionals found that 86% of companies targeted by ransomware were attacked on a holiday or weekend, while three quarters of the ransomware victims suffered an attack during a major corporate event, such as a merger, acquisition or IPO. Clearly, ransomware groups are striking outside of normal business hours, looking to take advantage of enterprise defenses that are likely to be either lowered or entirely offline.

Threat actors exercise patience to increase their chance of success

With holidays and weekends providing downtime for most of the working population, it presents a big challenge for most organizations. While most organizations run a security operations center (SOC) on a 24/7/365 basis, we know that many reduce SOC staffing during holidays and weekends – often by as much as 50%. A minority don’t staff their SOC at all during these periods, leaving the doors wide open for attackers. By leaving SOCs understaffed, enterprises increase the likelihood of threat actors being able to carry out successful cyberattacks.

There are numerous examples available to dissect. For instance, the disruptive ransomware attack on Transport for London took place on a Sunday. In the US, meanwhile, the ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline in 2021 occurred over Mother’s Day Weekend. Once they have gained access to a company network, ransomware gangs are typically patient and methodical with their attack strategies, often laying low for weeks, cementing their foothold and elevating privileges while scouting out key data and business apps to potentially encrypt as part of an extortion plot.

SOC staffing doesn’t align with attack patterns

Unfortunately, SOC staffing often doesn’t align with the attack patterns we are seeing, and there are several reasons for that. Work-life balance is important in many organizations and businesses don’t feel that full staffing is necessary considering most employees work weekday schedules. There is also the common misconception that hackers won’t target businesses of a certain size or type – and many organizations feel safe because they haven’t been targeted before. Furthermore, staffing a SOC 24/7/365 is a significant challenge. Maintaining around-the-clock coverage can require 15-20 team members at a minimum.

This creates a costly dilemma. What starts out as a simple commitment to improving security can snowball into a huge operational expense. To reduce those expenses, many organizations opt to scale back by cutting personnel or limiting hours of coverage, thinking that threats are less likely to occur outside of normal working hours. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Just as burglars avoid well-patrolled daytime areas, threat actors also look to carry out attacks when fewer eyes are watching. Assuming that you’re safe out-of-hours provides threat actors with open doors for attack. Instead, enterprises must always assume that attacks are imminent, ensuring that their SOC is not under resourced at any point. I call it having an assumed breach mindset. Never wax, never wane, hackers are persistent and never take time off.

Improving focus on identity security

It’s not just about having the right resources in place, but also using those resources in the most logical and effective ways possible, focusing on those areas that are of the greatest vulnerability or pose the most significant potential impact. Here, identity management must take priority. Today, the identity system has become the new perimeter of enterprise security, with 90% of ransomware attacks ending in identity system compromise.

Active Directory (AD), which forms the foundations of identity and access management for the vast majority of organizations globally, is a particularly common vulnerability that threat actors are consistently working to exploit. As a technology that was originally released in 1999, many companies are now faced with managing outdated AD configurations and excessive user privileges that can be exploited relatively easily. Couple this with the fact that AD often lack sufficient monitoring and security auditing, and it can be a challenge for firms to detect unusual or malicious activities quickly enough.

Attackers know about these problems better than anyone else. They know that if they’re successfully able to compromise AD, they’ll gain control of the keys to an organization's kingdom, providing them access to sensitive data and critical systems. Unfortunately, however, this an area that typically seems to be underestimated or overlooked. Many organizations either don’t have an identity recovery plan at all, or their recovery plan has concerning gaps. Not taking cyberattacks into account, not testing for identity vulnerabilities and testing recovery plans only quarterly or less frequently are common mistakes that can prove costly in case of an attack.

What’s the solution?

For enterprises, it is vital to address these shortcomings, ensuring that key vulnerabilities such as AD are protected and that the security guard isn’t dropped out-of-hours when threat actors are looking to make the most of understaffed SOCs. Businesses must see security as a central part of their business resilience strategy. Just like safety, financial and reputational risk, security can be the difference between an enterprise excelling or collapsing in the face of a catastrophic, game-changing incident.

To achieve this, there are several steps for enterprises to take:

1. Have a plan in place: Starting from scratch in the event of a catastrophe isn’t a good place to be. By preparing for potential scenarios ahead of time and testing the protocols on a regular basis, enterprises can more quickly and effectively respond should those situations become a reality.
2. Use budgets wisely: This isn’t necessarily about throwing more money at the problem. It’s about using the budgets that you do have to greatest effect, ensuring that existing resources are scrutinized and optimized.
3. Adopt ITDR: For organizations looking to use limited resources effectively, identity threat detection and response (ITDR) can be an incredibly useful tool, providing key capabilities such as automated auditing and alerting, attack pattern detection, and the rollback or suspension of unusual changes in AD.
4. Enhance productivity through automation: This automated support can also help enterprises to support the skilled security staff that they do have, freeing up engineers to spend time on more interesting, higher value-tasks.

By taking these steps to optimize security performance and leverage automation, organizations can simultaneously bridge the gaps that currently exist in both their SOC staffing and identity security capabilities, enabling them to better protect against, identify, respond to and recover from attacks – regardless of whether they strike on a Tuesday or a Sunday.

We've compiled a list of the best endpoint protection software.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

With the global, regular use of generative AI nearly doubling over the last year, according to McKinsey, rapid adoption has created a new lucrative target for cybercriminals. While 'off-the-shelf' solutions have made up a great deal of this adoption, organizations seeing the power of fine-tuned, business-specific responses have directed a great deal of budget towards training their own AI models.

Continuous innovations, like agentic AI, mean adoption is only increasing. The considerable autonomy agentic AI possess allows it to can make decisions, plan actions and learn from its experiences within the specific context of a business, making it applicable across business functions.

However, amid the excitement around AI are considerable cybersecurity risks that all too often aren’t being considered. By adopting any new software solution, businesses are introducing a new attack vector for cybercriminals. The problem with in-house developed AI models is that they are essentially a repository for a company's most valuable data, ranging from intellectual property, customer and employee data, and trade secrets, making it a highly attractive target.

This software runs off hardware likely housed in a data center, so business leaders need to ensure they are equipped with the right tools to have control over all aspects of their network to ensure sensitive company data is safe in the new attack vectors they are adopting.

The challenge to existing frameworks

The fact is that many businesses' existing security setups aren't currently fit for purpose. For years, IT departments have viewed cybersecurity as a compliance hurdle rather than a way to protect company data. This has led to an over-reliance on perimeter defenses and single sign-on solutions, which can create a false sense of security for organizations that believe compliance is equal to security.

Software solutions and more traditional approaches to data security, such as firewalls, still have a place in protecting a company's data security, but a greater depth of defense is required to ensure operations run smoothly. AI, while powerful, is still a type of software running on hardware typically found in a data center. Data centers are complex and sensitive environments. Factors such as power requirements, cooling systems, and physical security make these facilities prime targets. Moreover, the nature of AI development and deployment requires frequent access and updates. This necessitates strict control over who can access these systems and when. Organisations need to ensure they have the right framework in place to ensure their AI models run correctly and are protected at all levels of operation.

Physical segmentation: establishing control and defense

Many will already have some of the components required in place. What the majority are missing is a first and last layer of defense which can be establish via physical network segmentation. Through a hardware-based approach, physical network segmentation enables users to segment all digital assets remotely, instantly and without using the internet. Through the press of a button, from anywhere in the world, organizations can use this technology to physically isolate their chosen segment from the overall network, disconnecting it from the internet. This technology acts as a guardian for AI, controlling access and ensuring its benefits can be reaped. For businesses using AI, it can offer the following benefits:

1. Improved security and reduced risk

In the context of protecting an AI model, this type of protection can act as a guardian, preventing a business’ own AI being poisoned, and preventing the use of AI for malicious purposes. 

With no connection to the internet, physical network segmentation can be used to disconnect the model, preventing a cyber-attack or unwanted access. This will hide assets from view and enhance an organizations' existing depth of defense. For AI models, network segmentation can be used to keep components offline until needed, massively reducing the window of time a hacker has to access the software.

Organizations may be hesitant to adopt this approach, assuming it would cause interruptions in operations. But this doesn’t have to be the case. The key is implementing a process that lays out clever and well-considered timing. A generative AI model doesn't necessarily need to be connected to the internet 24/7 to perform well. A connection is required during a short window when users send a prompt. Once sent, the model can be disconnected and reconnected once the response has been generated and needs to be sent back. This short period of time is not nearly enough for a cybercriminal to clone the model and get their hands on sensitive company data. In terms of user experience, the time taken to connect and reconnect should be short enough that humans will not be aware of a delay.

2. Aiding regulatory compliance

Governments worldwide are adapting to the sensitivity of data. With AI models housing such an array of sensitive data, all eyes are on businesses to prove they are doing everything possible to prevent an attack or breach. With a lack of AI specific regulation, it’s hard to know where to start. Physical network segmentation can support overall compliance because there is no better effort than keeping sensitive data completely off the internet or physically separating it when attacked. 

3. Effective incident response and recovery

In the case of a cyber-attack, reactive network segmentation can be used to impede attack propagation and isolate compromised assets and data quickly, effectively preventing further access for hackers. During the recovery process, leaders will have the ability to then rapidly reconnect previously isolated, known safe, segments after an attack making it possible to ensure AI models can be used as soon as possible and ensure the restoration of services.

Looking ahead

With more and more AI models trained in-house, cybercriminals will more than likely start to target these repositories of sensitive data. Once they have access to the AI, all sorts of havoc can be caused by the ability to clone the data, poison the model to generate harmful responses or lock it down with ransomware, causing significant company damage.

Organizations need to be able to confidently leverage the power of AI without compromising on security. By implementing a framework that allows the individual control of zones through network segmentation, business leaders will be able to not only mitigate threats, but also establish effective response and recovery processes while ensuring maximum performance business wide.

We've set up a comprehensive list of the best AI tools.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Officials said the attacks happened in the Catatumbo region near the border with Venezuela, following the government's failed attempts to hold peace talks with the National Liberation Army.

(Image credit: Fernando Vergara)

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 20.

Here are some hints — and the answers — for Connections: Sports Edition No. 119 for Jan. 20

Here are some hints -- and the answers -- for the Jan. 20 Strands puzzle, No. 323.

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The new initiative will be rolled out across 27 stations and feature "additional visual storytelling capabilities," Allen Media Group says.

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Trump took the rally as an opportunity to preview several of his Day 1 actions, including on border security, energy, and ending the Biden administration's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in government agencies.

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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 Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

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 #589) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• COOKIE
• BEAR
• SPINACH
• SHOULDER
• CROOK
• ANCHOR
• ELBOW
• CHEAT
• PIPE
• HANDLE
• BEND
• FOREARM
• FITTED
• ANGLE
• ASSUME
• BALANCE

NYT Connections today (game #589) - hint #1 - group hints

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

• YELLOW: Control the situation
• GREEN: You go around these 
• PURPLE: Add a word that rhymes with “neat”
• BLUE: Musclebound sailorman

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 #589) - hint #2 - group answers

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

• YELLOW: TAKE ON, AS A RESPONSIBILITY 
• GREEN: CORNERS 
• PURPLE: SHEET 
• BLUE: ASSOCIATED WITH POPEYE 

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

NYT Connections today (game #589) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #589, are…

• YELLOW: TAKE ON, AS A RESPONSIBILITY ASSUME, BEAR, HANDLE, SHOULDER
• GREEN: CORNERS ANGLE, BEND, CROOK, ELBOW
• PURPLE: SHEET BALANCE, CHEAT, COOKIE, FITTED
• BLUE: ASSOCIATED WITH POPEYE ANCHOR, FOREARM, PIPE, SPINACH

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 3 mistakes

SPINACH will forever be ASSOCIATED WITH POPEYE – the leafy veg giving him superhuman strength and giving parents across the generations an example of why you should eat your greens. But I could have looked at the other three words forever and I’d have never got the link – FOREARM? – congratulations to anyone who worked out that one.

Interestingly, bicep tears or ruptures caused by people attempting to mirror his bulging muscles are called Popeye Deformity. What a legacy.

Meanwhile, before wrestling with Purple and Blue, I got obsessed thinking one group of words had to be about plumbing and although you can get pipes that come in an ELBOW shape and SHOULDER sounded like a specialized type of PIPE too, I was overthinking the obvious CORNERS.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Sunday, 19 January, game #588)

• YELLOW: FUND KITTY, POOL, POT, PURSE
• GREEN: COURT FILING ACTION, CASE, CLAIM, SUIT
• BLUE: LANDFORMS BASIN, BLUFF, CAPE, PLAIN
• PURPLE: THEY HAVE RAYS AQUARIUM, GEOMETRY, SUN, TAMPA BAY

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.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 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 NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

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 #1092) - hint #1 - Vowels How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 3*.

* 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 #1092) - 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 1.

Quordle today (game #1092) - 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 #1092) - 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 2.

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 #1092) - hint #5 - starting letters (2) What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• S

• T

• T

• R

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

Quordle today (game #1092) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1092, are…

• SIXTY
• THONG
• TATTY
• ROBIN

A pleasing Quordle victory today. I convinced myself that the T in the first word had to be the fourth letter and took a chance with SIXTH, which unlocked SIXTY.

I could have got ROBIN quicker, as it was obvious after the first two guesses that the word began RO, but my attention was elsewhere and as is often the case I was locked in trying to solve the first word.

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

Daily Sequence today (game #1092) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1092, are…

• ROWER
• CAMEL
• CURVE
• CREEK

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1091, Sunday 19 January: WREST, RINSE, SCOUR, CANNY
• Quordle #1090, Saturday 18 January: BLARE, ITCHY, BICEP, PIPER
• Quordle #1089, Friday 17 January: CATCH, WEARY, SWOON, LATHE
• Quordle #1088, Thursday 16 January: PARTY, BLUNT, TWEED, PLANT
• Quordle #1087, Wednesday 15 January: RISEN, PLATE, RURAL, ENVOY
• Quordle #1086, Tuesday 14 January: SWARM, SCRAP, ONION, BELCH
• Quordle #1085, Monday 13 January: EYING, GIDDY, CHEAP, PETAL
• Quordle #1084, Sunday 12 January: BRIEF, PETAL, WOMAN, FELON
• Quordle #1083, Saturday 11 January: ASCOT, FIBER, ROGUE, SMELL
• Quordle #1082, Friday 10 January: BIGOT, INLET, LEECH, TUNIC
• Quordle #1081, Thursday 9 January: RESET, HUMOR, TENOR, IMAGE
• Quordle #1080, Wednesday 8 January: MINCE, SADLY, RISEN, VOUCH
• Quordle #1079, Tuesday 7 January: CREED, FILET, ROUTE, TAPER
• Quordle #1078, Monday 6 January: PIVOT, WOOLY, GRUNT, GROOM
• Quordle #1077, Sunday 5 January: BORAX, JUDGE, CADET, SALON
• Quordle #1076, Saturday 4 January: CORER, CRATE, QUASI, EXIST
• Quordle #1075, Friday 3 January: PERKY, QUARK, NAVEL, SHEEN
• Quordle #1074, Thursday 2 January: UNIFY, SWORE, DEPOT, INTRO
• Quordle #1073, Wednesday 1 January: CLING, SUITE, WORRY, TONIC
• Quordle #1072, Tuesday 31 December: PLUMP, TUBER, IRATE, ICILY

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 NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

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

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Curiouser and curiouser!

NYT Strands today (game #323) - hint #2 - clue words

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

• THAT
• TILL
• BONE
• PART
• TONE

NYT Strands today (game #323) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• Lewis Carroll fantasy

NYT Strands today (game #323) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First side: top, 5th column

Last side: bottom, 1st column

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

NYT Strands today (game #323) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #323, are…

• HATTER
• RABBIT
• CROQUET
• DORMOUSE
• CATERPILLAR
• SPANGRAM: WONDERLAND

• My rating: Easy
• My score: 1 hint

Anyone unfamiliar with the work of Lewis Carroll would have had a very curious experience trying to fathom today’s theme. CROQUET? CATERPILLAR?

It took me a couple of hints and the WONDERLAND Spangram before it made sense.

Alice In Wonderland is classed as a fantasy, but I always thought of it as a horror – I can handle zombies, vampires, and mutants, but the thought of a playing-card soldier chills me to the bones. I’m not alone: this children’s classic was turned into a horror film – Alice In Terrorland – a couple of years ago, although it’s 3% Rotten Tomatoes rating suggests that it wasn’t the greatest of ideas.

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

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Sunday, 19 January, game #322)

• SPAM
• SENT
• INBOX
• TRASH
• DRAFTS
• STARRED
• SNOOZED
• SPANGRAM: EMAIL LABEL

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.