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Wordle game on a smartphone

Today's Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you're a bit of a nerd.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable
SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for October 26, 2026

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

A patchy clothing item.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

The letter E appears twice.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter G.

The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

GEEKY

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Wordle.



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Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License

TL;DR: Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows is $27.97 (reg. $219.99) through Nov. 1.

Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License
Credit: Microsoft

This is your last chance to ditch Microsoft 365’s subscription fees for good. Until tomorrow, Nov. 16, at midnight, you can grab a lifetime license to Microsoft Office 2021 for way less than its usual retail price. Simply pay once, download the full software suite, and never worry about renewals again.

We know what you’re thinking, but rest assured, this isn’t some stripped-down lite version either. It’s the real deal. Whether you’re writing reports, crunching numbers, building presentations, managing emails, or wrangling databases, the lifetime version of Microsoft Office has you covered.

It’s a one-time download for one Windows PC, so once it’s yours, it’s yours. The full pro-level toolkit, minus the stress of a subscription. Plus, with instant license delivery and free customer support, getting started is as painless as your new spreadsheet workflow.

No more “trial expired” pop-ups. No more surprise charges. Just the latest versions of Microsoft’s best apps, ready to support all of your work and personal needs.

Download Microsoft Office for Windows while it’s on sale for $27.97 until Nov. 1 at 11:59 p.m. PT (reg. $219.99). No coupon is needed.

StackSocial prices subject to change.



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Classical marble building facade with justice scales emblem and glowing pink pixel AI blocks inside symbolizing integration of artificial intelligence into law and institutions - stock photo

Across the nation, there appears to be growing frustration with the explosion of AI-generated advertising plaguing small-business storefronts and restaurant interiors. Last Thursday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed the Artificial Intelligence Deceptive Advertising Act into law, mandating that all ads, from million-dollar television commercials to printed flyers passed out on the street, contain a disclosure label in the same format as the ad itself.

SEE ALSO: Hackers find a way to turn users' own AI agents and Downloads folders against them

The purpose of the bill is to combat false or misleading advertising, which is much easier to engage in with the help of AI-generated content. The bill, as introduced, states:

"An advertiser may not create and disseminate or cause to be created and disseminated an advertisement that uses synthetic content in a manner that creates a false consumer perception about the nature, origin or authenticity of the goods or services being advertised, without clear and conspicuous disclosure. A disclosure under this section must state that the advertisement contains content that was modified or generated using artificial intelligence."

And because it applies to all advertising shown in Pennsylvania, it will impact, for example, television commercials created in other states or advertisements made in other countries, so the consequences of this bill will be far-reaching. 

According to reporting by The Verge, though, critics of the bill wonder how effective it will be, given the imprecise nature of some of the language used. As The Verge notes, language like "significantly modified" is subjective and open to wide ranges of interpretation, while extensive exceptions made for "parody, satire, commentary, or criticism" offer advertisers legal wiggle room. 

Whatever the ultimate impacts of the bill or the future interpretations by the court system, it represents another attempt by elected representatives to respond to the overwhelming will of voters to bring artificial intelligence under legislative control, so we expect this bill to initiate a trend.



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A phone with the Pips logo.

Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalog.

Released in August 2025, Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.

Currently, if you're stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.

How to play Pips

If you've ever played dominoes, you'll have a passing familiarity with how Pips is played. As we've shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don't necessarily have to match.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for October 25, 2026

The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible — and common — for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.

Here are common examples you'll run into across the difficulty levels:

  • Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.

  • Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.

  • Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.

  • Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.

  • Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.

If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for October 25, 2026

Easy difficulty hints, answers for October 25 Pips

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 5-3, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (2): Everything in this space must be greater than 2. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally.

Less Than (1): Everything in this space must be less than 1. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally; 0-1, placed vertically; 0-2, placed vertically.

Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 0-1, placed vertically; 1-4, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 0-2, placed vertically; 1-4, placed horizontally.

Medium difficulty hints, answers for October 25 Pips

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-0, placed horizontally.

Less Than (2): Everything in this space must be less than 2. The answer is 3-1, placed vertically.

Equal (3): Everything in this space must be equal to 3. The answer is 3-3, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 2-3, placed vertically.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 6-0, placed vertically.

Greater Than (2): Everything in this space must be greater than 2. The answer is 2-4, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 5-6, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 5-6, placed horizontally.

Hard difficulty hints, answers for October 25 Pips

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-0, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-3, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 5-3, placed horizontally.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-5, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 2-5, placed horizontally.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 2-0, placed vertically.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally.

Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-2, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-1, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 0-3, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-6, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 3-6, placed horizontally.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 3-2, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-0, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 3-1, placed vertically.

Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-0, placed vertically.

Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-1, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 5-0, placed horizontally.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 4-0, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 4-1, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-1, placed vertically.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-1, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 0-1, placed horizontally.

Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-5, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 4-5, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 5-1, placed vertically.

Number (4): Everything in this space must add up to 4. The answer is 4-2, placed horizontally.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 4-2, placed horizontally.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.



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AI-generated image of a man looking shock at the blood running down his fingers

Elon Musk doesn’t have a great track record of following through on his promises. According to MuskOmeter, a site that tracks the pledges Musk has made and whether he’s kept them, he’s at about a 24 percent hit rate.

So it’s almost impressive that one of his sillier promises from this year actually came true.

Late Friday afternoon, Musk shared the first of several planned episodes of an AI-generated version of Homer’s The Odyssey, made with Grok Imagine, the AI video generator from his company xAI. According to a post from the Grok Imagine account, the project is a collaboration between Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Both specialize in generative AI filmmaking.

Musk first made the promise in July. As Mashable reported at the time, he posted on X that, before the year ended, Grok Imagine would make a full-length Odyssey movie that would be "historically accurate and true to the art of Homer."

SEE ALSO: 'The Odyssey' is exposing some unexpected dating dealbreakers

That was the culmination of months of Musk complaining about Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. Much of the right-wing backlash to Nolan’s film was framed in terms of historical accuracy. The initial trailer sparked a little doubt about a faithful adaptation, as some took issue with the film’s armor, calling it bland and closer to Roman than Greek.

The bigger outrage came from the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page as Sinon. In February, Musk declared on X that Nolan had "lost his integrity" over it, as Mashable reported. Musk and others argued that a Black woman couldn’t play a character described as the most beautiful woman in the ancient world.

Leave aside what that says about who gets to count as beautiful. Helen of Troy isn’t a real person. Troy was a real city, but historians still debate whether anything resembling the Trojan War ever happened. In Greek mythology, Helen herself is the daughter of Zeus and was hatched from an egg. "Historical accuracy" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Musk also took issue with Page's casting. In May, Musk reshared posts criticizing the casting, including some that misgendered the trans actor. Because Nolan’s cast list didn’t say who was playing whom, online conspiracy theories claimed Page would play Achilles. Instead, Page played Sinon, a character who originally appears in Virgil’s Aeneid, which is essentially Roman fan fiction of the Trojan War.

With the casting details, Musk and right-leaning influencers predicted Nolan's adaptation would flop — "go woke, go broke." Instead, The Odyssey opened to $124.5 million in July, a huge number for an R-rated, nearly three-hour film. IMAX 70mm screenings sold out weeks in advance, as Mashable previously reported. As of this writing, Nolan's film has grossed over $1.7 billion worldwide.

Nolan, for his part, has been openly skeptical of generative AI. He told AFP earlier this year that the idea of it replacing human creativity is "a nonsense," according to The Guardian.

Is Elon Musk's The Odyssey good?

Musk's Grok-imagined version of Homer's tale is about what you'd expect. The first episode runs a little over seven minutes and covers the Greeks’ arrival at Troy. Every character is white.

Visually, it has all the usual problems of generative AI video: unnaturally perfect teeth; the weightless, almost water-like hair texture; and the skin has an odd, smudgy quality that comes from the model not really understanding lighting or perspective. The backgrounds also suffer from something akin to texture pop-in, where video games load low-resolution textures before the detailed ones, so the screen isn't just black.

As just a film to watch, the writing isn't all that great, and it's hard to keep up with all the characters as they look similar or look way too similar to real people.

AI-generated characters in Grok's The Odyssey adaption
Is that not Kristofer Hivju? Credit: Grok Imagine / Wonder Studios / Mashable screenshot

On top of that, in the entire seven-minute runtime, Odysseus is the only named character. Unless you've read The Odyssey fairly recently, you'd be confused about who some of the characters are — how is one supposed to know that one of those two men in the photo above is Palamedes? I sure didn't.

As part of the promotion, Wonder Studios posted on X that "Homer didn’t have Grok… we do." True enough. Homer also told the story well enough that people are still adapting it nearly 3,000 years later, without any help from AI.

Although Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is winding down its theater run, the critically acclaimed film is set to release digitally on Nov. 17. To tide you over, Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, starring Brad Pitt and Eric Bana, got a cultural re-evaluation thanks to the success of Nolan's film. It's human-made and currently holds a 3.5 average rating on Letterboxd.



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Close-up of young Asian woman using voice recognition technology on smartphone. - stock photo

If interacting with Siri has been the extent of your experience "talking" to AI, you're in for a rude awakening. While Apple's voice assistant often fumbles basic commands and can take an unnaturally long time to process a request, the latest and greatest AI models are moving closer and closer to natural human speech.

Case in point: Dessa, the brainchild of Jack Dorsey's Block, is allegedly the world's first full-duplex speech model, meaning it can listen to you and speak simultaneously, much like a real human does in the flow of normal conversation. In fact, that's Dessa's draw: it was trained entirely on human speech to make it as natural-sounding as possible.

But these claims have to be heard to be appreciated, and Block's press release announcing Dessa shows just how far AI models have come to approximating the rhythm of natural human conversation. 

SEE ALSO: Microsoft launches new MAI family of AI models for reasoning, voice, coding, and images

In the second sample audio clip, for example, a real-life human and Dessa have an extended conversation about the movies of Christopher Nolan, and though the model does flex its knowledge at certain points, supplying a movie title, for example, it does so in a natural rather than robotic way, mirroring the tone of his human interlocutor while keeping up what, to human ears, sounds like a perfectly ordinary back-and-forth about Nolan's cinematic world.  

In the third audio sample, Dessa spontaneously reacts to an unexpected prompt from the human ("Are you excited for our anniversary?") with genuine surprise and enthusiasm, complete with the conversation markers you would expect from a human being: audible gasps, a joyful enthusiasm that verges on tears, and even a difficulty finding the right words. 

The final clip nixes human involvement entirely, featuring a conversation between ChatGPT and Dessa, and the contrast between the robotic, unnatural speech patterns of the ChatGPT agent and Dessa's prompts, interruptions, and puzzled questions perfectly illustrates how far Block has pushed its AI speech models. 

Perhaps most impressive of all, Dessa seems to understand when a human speaking to it is being sarcastic, which requires a sophisticated understanding of both tone and its relationship to the content of speech that adult humans process effortlessly but that has historically stumped AI models (don't even think of speaking to Siri in a sarcastic tone). 

According to the same press release, Block's motivation for developing Dessa is simple:

"Speech is the most natural interface to any intelligence, super or otherwise, and today’s voice AI wastes it. It flattens what we say into text and can’t keep up with human timing. AI keeps gaining power and independence, and it’s still nearly deaf to the emotion in our voices. Imagine being in serious pain while a voice AI has no idea and just keeps going. That’s the safety problem. Dessa is a step toward fixing it."

Leave aside the question of whether recognizing a tone of urgency, fear, or pain in a voice pattern is the same as sympathizing with the emotions behind those markers. But one should take a second to appreciate the complexity of training agentic AI to pick up on them in the first place.

Wherever this leads us, Dessa is undoubtedly a major advancement in artificial intelligence and, more importantly, in bridging the gap between human communication and AI understanding.



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iPhone Duo

While the iPhone Duo has been mostly showered with praise on its launch day, there has been some criticism of the device. Reviewers aren't fans of the FaceTime camera's output quality, many apps have not yet been optimized for Apple's first foldable device, and there's a new report showing that the inner display's crease at the hinge becomes more visible as users fold and unfold the device over time.

However, just hours after the iPhone Duo was released, some users are going home to find what appears to be a major defect that makes those previous critiques pale in comparison.

Reddit

The inner display of the iPhone Duo is cracking from top to bottom along the entire hinge — right where the device folds — for some very unlucky first-day iPhone Duo users.

It's unclear exactly what the issue is, but the result appears to be the same each time, according to photos of cracked iPhone Duo displays spreading across social media. A large crack appears on the inner display right along the hinge. In addition, the cracked hinge causes a pixel issue on the right-hand side of the inner display, resulting in a bright white line.

Reports of faulty iPhone hinges don't seem to be contained to any specific market, either. While it's also unclear just how widespread the defect is, users from the U.S. to Australia to China have all reported cracked iPhone Duo displays at the hinge.

Reddit

A Reddit user in Australia shared his customer support experience while contacting Apple about his defective iPhone Duo. Over the phone, the company offered to provide an express replacement; however, the user would have to "put down a hold for the full cost of the phone." Apple also couldn't guarantee a timeframe for when the replacement would arrive. The user decided to go straight to the Apple Store instead, where they "apologized and replaced it with a brand-new one on the spot." It seems Apple may have some extra iPhone Duo devices in-store as replacements for when problems arise.

The Australian Redditor said the crack occurred in less than 6 hours after picking up the iPhone Duo and after they folded the device fewer than 20 times.

As MacRumors points out, Apple may be looking to collect broken devices to investigate what went wrong and fix the issue when manufacturing iPhone Duo devices going forward.

Consumers should always expect some issues and bugs with first-generation devices such as the iPhone Duo. But a huge crack down the middle of the inner display is certainly an extreme defect. Apple will undoubtedly fix the issue for unlucky customers, but it's certainly a big launch-day inconvenience for the first iPhone Duo owners. 



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