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

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… On the road

NYT Strands today (game #234) - hint #2 - clue words

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

• STEAD
• DATE
• DART
• NICE
• COIN
• CURT

NYT Strands today (game #234) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• Highway information

NYT Strands today (game #234) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First: left, 4th row

Last: right, 6th row

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

NYT Strands today (game #234) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #234, are…

• STOP
• MERGE
• CONSTRUCTION
• YIELD
• BUMP
• DETOUR
• SPANGRAM: TRAFFICSIGNS

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

The only minor complication today, for me at least, was the need for me to translate UK TRAFFICSIGNS into US – for instance rather than YIELD, we have 'Give way', and we would say 'Roadworks' rather than CONSTRUCTION. But that was as difficult as today's Strands got – i.e. not very difficult at all.

It helped that I spotted STOP right away, before I'd even uncovered a hint word, thanks to its prominent position in the top-left corner of the board. That was enough to confirm my suspicion as to what was needed here, and none of the answers were themselves hard to think of or find.

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

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Tuesday, 22 October, game #233)

• COBALT
• AZURE
• TURQUOISE
• INDIGO
• NAVY
• PERIWINKLE
• SPANGRAM: THEBLUES

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.

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 #500) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• JEANS
• JACKET
• RAIN
• HAZE
• GOBLIN
• JAY
• BERET
• САВ
• MOON
• PAGES
• HEART
• THUMB
• PROSE
• SALAD
• WHALE
• JOURNALISM

NYT Connections today (game #500) - hint #1 - group hints

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

• Yellow: [color] blank
• Green: [color] blank
• Blue: [color] blank
• Purple: [color] blank

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 #500) - hint #2 - group answers

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

• YELLOW: YELLOW ___
• GREEN: GREEN ___
• BLUE: BLUE ___
• PURPLE: PURPLE ___

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

NYT Connections today (game #500) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #500, are…

• YELLOW: YELLOW ___ CAB, JACKET, JOURNALISM, PAGES
• GREEN: GREEN ___ BERET, GOBLIN, SALAD, THUMB
• BLUE: BLUE ___ JAY, JEANS, MOON, WHALE
• PURPLE: PURPLE ___ HAZE, HEART, PROSE, RAIN

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

Happy birthday, NYT Connections! Yes, here we are at game #500, 18 months on from the first time we saw that grid of 16 words that needed rearranging into four groups. The NYT has duly celebrated with a game that neatly celebrates itself, in that each of the answers is a reference to its place on the board.

However, while today's Connections is good fun, I do wonder about the wisdom of making all four groups their specific color with a blank – for instance PURPLE RAIN, PURPLE HEART, PURPLE PROSE, PURPLE HAZE for, yes, purple. One group like that, great. But four… well it just made it all a bit too easy, right?

It's not like most of these blanks are hard to fill in, either – the only I didn't know was [yellow] JOURNALISM, but otherwise they were all really obvious, even the purple ones. I'd solved the whole thing within about two minutes – and I bet you did too.

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

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Tuesday, 22 October, game #499)

• YELLOW: BRAND-NAME DESIGNER, HAUTE, HIGH-END, LUXURY
• GREEN: DEVISE CONCOCT, ENGINEER, HATCH, MASTERMIND
• BLUE: NASA SPACECRAFT GALILEO, PIONEER, VIKING, VOYAGER
• PURPLE: GAMES WHERE YOU SAY THE GAME’S NAME BINGO, MARCO POLO, TAG, UNO

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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More than 10,000 professional actors, musicians, writers, and other creators have signed a petition urging against AI using their work without permission for training. British composer Ed Newton-Rex wrote the statement and set up the signature collection. The ranks of signers include many famous names. They range from Hollywood stars like Kevin Bacon and Julianne Moore to record-selling musicians and composers like Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and best-selling authors Harlan Coben and Ted Chiang. The statement itself is brief and to the point:

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

Essentially, the signers are anxious that their copyrighted works are contributing without their permission to the enormous amounts of data used to train generative AI models behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, and so many other text, image, audio, and video creation tools. They claim that it violates various intellectual property laws and regulations.

Along with individual celebrities, the statement has garnered the approval of many organizations in the creative space. SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, Universal Music Group, and the International Publishers Association are just a few who signed in support.

There’s an issue of compensation as well. For instance, Meta wrote hefty paychecks to celebrities for permission to use their voices with its new Meta AI assistant. Without that, these complaints cause issues, like when OpenAI was accused of mimicking Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT in imitation of the movie Her.

Newton-Rex knows the AI space well, having formerly worked on generative AI audio models at Stability AI. He has claimed he left partly because he believed Stability AI went too far in leaning on the fair use doctrine for training its models. He now runs Fairly Trained, which describes itself as a "non-profit certifying generative AI companies for fairer training data practices.”

Today we’re publishing a statement on AI training, signed by 10,000+ creators already:“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”Signatories include… pic.twitter.com/AqVaEThMs4October 22, 2024

AI pushback

This is far from the first such lawsuit. OpenAI alone has multiple pending cases from writers who claim ChatGPT infringed on their work, while Suno, Udio, and other AI music creators are dealing with lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and major music labels. The complaints, legal and otherwise, are growing as the AI tools they rail against explode in popularity. They are a facet of the bigger ethical and regulatory questions currently unanswered around AI models and their training data.

You probably won't notice any impact on AI tools in the short term, but the signers clearly hope to push the debate over ethical AI training to the forefront and shape the ultimate form of regulations and laws surrounding the practice. It won't do much on its own, but in tandem with the resolution of legal challenges and new regulations, it could be a factor in how AI companies design and build their models in the years ahead or whether the current system of creative work compensation looks anything like it does today.

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If you're think that the Sony WH-1000XM6 must be due soon, to replace the now-several-years-old current model, you might be right. The Sony WH-1000XM5 rank among the best noise-cancelling headphones you can buy today – but this is an incredibly competitive market and there's no shortage of contenders for the crown, and Sony's own headphones are so good that the previous model, the Sony WH-1000XM4, are currently atop our best-buy guide.

That means Sony needs to keep improving its flagship over-ears if it wants to keep selling new pairs to people. And the rumour mill says that it's going to do just that, and that the Sony WH-1000XM6 will be with us soon… but not too soon.

Given that the WH-1000XM5 got five out of five stars in our review, which also noted that the WH-1000XM4 were so good that the improvements were "more marginal than before", what on earth could Sony be planning for the next generation? Here's what we think we know so far.

Sony's WH-1000XM6 release date rumors

Back in June, GSM Arena reported two key stories: one, the Sony LinkBuds and LinkBuds S would get a 2024 update at tge same time; and two, the WH-1000XM5 and WF-1000XM5 earbuds would not. Instead, Sony was most likely "targeting the first six months of next year" for its flagships.

Given that the first story proved to be exactly correct when Sony announced two new LinkBuds models, and that the second story was from the same source, we're inclined to think that the prediction of a launch in the first half of 2025 is probably sound too. And another leak on Chinese social media site Weibo said that Sony wants to synchronize the update cycles for the two flagships, which again would mean a 2025 launch, since that's when the Sony WF-1000XM5 earbuds will hit two years and be due an update, under Sony's usual cadence.

We haven't seen much leak evidence of this yet, until recently, perhaps. The Sony watchers at The Walkman Blog have spotted a new wireless Sony headset code in import documents. It has the product code YY2984, and according to the blog it "could be" one of the XM6 models. Then again, it's simply listing some kind of wireless headset with a plastic shell, so it could be anything.

That said, when the current models were about three months from release they showed up in FCC regulatory filings; devices need a lot of paperwork before they go on sale, so it's not impossible that YY2984 are indeed these future candidates for the best Sony headphones. It's pretty weak sauce, I know, but that's the exciting world of headphones for you. It's the FCC filing you really want to be on tenterhooks for – that will start the countdown. Perhaps that'll come in in December for March-ish launch.

Sony's WH-1000XM6: what we'd like to see

Bose-beating noise cancellation: Sony has gone from being a total leader here to being merely very good. Bose's latest noise cancelling headphones have exceptional ANC that beats Sony, so let's see if Sony can reclaim the crown.

Better battery life: Sony has basically dictated the average for this for years now, hitting 30 hours consistently. But when the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless and Cambridge Audio P100 can hit 60 hours, Sony should really offer us more. I'm not holding my breath for this, though.

Water resistance: This is something that's increasingly common among rivals, and it would be nice to see some official IP ratings.

The return of the fold: The XM5's revised design made the headphones less portable, which was a surprise – they could return to our list of the best travel headphones with this tweak. The headband could do with a bit more padding too, while I'm complaining.

Dolby Atmos spatial audio: No doubt Sony's 360 Reality Audio will be here again, but with Dolby Atmos supported by several music services and – even more importantly, all the big movie services, we'd love to see support here. Especially if it comes with Dolby's own head-tracking, which is excellent on the Sonos Ace and LG Tone Free T90S.

USB-C audio: Easy true hi-res audio from phones and laptops? Many of the best wireless headphones offer this, but Bose doesn't, so Sony can get one up on its old rival.