Wordle hint and answer #650: Friday, March 31

Turn every game of Wordle (opens in new tab) into a winner with our help. We’ve got general tips to help you improve every guess you make, a clue written especially for the March 31 (650) puzzle, and the answer to today’s Wordle, only a quick click or scroll away.

That was tense. Every guess today seemed to throw up more problems than answers, my screen filling with grey boxes. The situation was looking grim: the few letters I had found just didn’t go together—until my next guess finally made sense of them. It was a close thing, but I finally, happily, stumbled into today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

A Wordle hint for Friday, March 31

This word describes all of the items or people in a particular group, or an event that occurs regularly: something that happens _____ Wednesday, for example. There’s just one vowel today. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, a vowel is used twice in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path: 

  • A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels. 
  • Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess.
  • Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer.

There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Future)

What is the #650 Wordle answer?

Let’s keep winning. The answer to the March 31 (650) Wordle is EVERY. 

Previous answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated. 

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

  • March 30: BREAD
  • March 29: BESET
  • March 28: HURRY
  • March 27: GUANO
  • March 26: UNTIE
  • March 25: VOTER
  • March 24: GROUT
  • March 23: STAID
  • March 22: DUVET
  • March 21: TOUGH

Learn more about Wordle 

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.

You should start with a strong word (opens in new tab) like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.

After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips (opens in new tab), and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above. 

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle (opens in new tab), as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle (opens in new tab), refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures (opens in new tab). Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 


Source link

Cyberpunk 2077 devs announce that they’ll announce something about Phantom Liberty in June

Back when it was first revealed, the hope was that Cyberpunk 2077 would revolutionize the genre, and maybe even gaming as a whole. That’s not quite what happened, in part because the launch had more bugs than Starship Troopers. Performance issues, cars running into stuff (opens in new tab), getting softlocked in the tutorial, weird children (opens in new tab). It was a mess.

Thankfully, the redemption arc for Cyberpunk is real. With multitudes of bug fixes, content updates, and the transformative patch 1.6 behind us, as well as the massive success of the Cyberpunk anime (opens in new tab), it seems as though things are finally getting in order for the game. So it’s with a certain amount of tentative excitement I look toward CD Projekt’s only planned DLC, Phantom Liberty.

We haven’t heard much since a pretty sick trailer (opens in new tab) at the Game Awards last year, but the official Cyberpunk Twitter account revealed (opens in new tab)the “exciting news” today that we’ll learn more about Phantom Liberty in June.

Now an announcement of future announcements is kind of like your dad telling you he’ll tell you about something when you’re older—deeply unsatisfying, and only serves to make you more curious. It’s not exactly a big surprise that we won’t hear anything until June, though, it being the month every videogame company likes to market their games. Although, as we’ve just learned, it won’t be at E3.

Cyberpunk is a flawed game, but we did like it, even in its buggier original form—we gave it a 78%. Phantom Liberty’s journey is supposed to be one of hard bitten espionage and survival, but hopefully they find time to include some of those human moments (opens in new tab) that made the base game special. 

See more



Source link

Help, I can’t stop exploding corpses in Diablo 4


What makes Diablo 4’s corpses so explodeable? It seems like all my Necromancer has to do is gesture vaguely at them and they spontaneously burst into clouds of red mist like they’ve been stuffed with C4. I can’t say that I expected a skill called Corpse Explosion to be my favourite thing about Diablo 4 when I started playing the beta, but there’s a certain je ne sais quoi to weaponizing the bodies of your foes and detonating them deep in the ranks of their former comrades. If Necromancer is a class that’s thematically about subverting will, Corpse Explosion is pretty fitting—I know I wouldn’t want my body to randomly blow up.

Consuming cadavers is a big part of being a Necro in Diablo 4, letting you summon skeletal soldiers and mages who protec, attac, and just generally distrac big bosses and enemies while you weave your death magic in the background. Before long your screen is overflowing with corpsey goodness, but having hit your max number of skelly servants, there are few ways to harness these excess bodies beyond summoning a one-off priest to buff your soldiers. The answer? Explode those corpses.

Image 1 of 2

Is Corpse Explosion the best Necromancer ability? (Image credit: Blizzard)



Source link

The Chinese versions of Blizzard’s games may have been shut down over a big misunderstanding



In January, gamers in China lost access to Blizzard games (opens in new tab), including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Diablo 3, and Overwatch, as a result of a falling out between Activision and its Chinese partner, NetEase, a few months earlier. But a New York Times (opens in new tab) report says that while the relationship between the two had been strained for some time, the incident that finally ended it may have been a misunderstanding. 

The relationship between Activision and NetEase had been under strain for some time, according to the report. For one thing, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was unhappy with NetEase’s $100 million investment in Bungie in 2018 (opens in new tab), because Bungie was behind schedule on Destiny 2 content and Kotick worried the investment, which was to help Bungie become a “multi-franchise entertainment studio,” would slow down the work even further. Kotick was also reportedly unhappy with another NetEase investment into a studio founded by a former senior employee at Activision; that resulted in a 2019 agreement that prevented NetEase from hiring former Activision employees or investing in their studios.



Source link

Bloober Team wants you to know it never said Silent Hill 2 is done, no matter what Google Translate says

Bloober Team has poked its head up to let us all know that no, actually, the Silent Hill 2 remake isn’t on the verge of release mere months after its official announcement back in October (opens in new tab). In a post to Twitter, the studio behind the upcoming SH2 remake said that some of its recent comments had been “taken out of context” and subject to “inaccurate translations,” and that it did not, in fact, say Silent Hill 2 was “ready for release”.

The statement follows an interview with studio president Piotr Babieno in Bankier.pl (opens in new tab) last week. In that interview, Babieno seemed to say (via Google Translate) that the Silent Hill 2 remake was “technically ready,” and appeared to suggest that the studio reckoned it would sell around 10 million copies of it, a staggering amount.

It turns out machine translation may have led us astray on this one. While I’m fairly sure the translation of “technically ready” is pretty accurate—I can (just about) speak Russian, and the Polish phrase “technicznie gotowy” is very similar to the Russian for ‘technically ready’—Bloober is emphatic that doesn’t mean the game is on the verge of release. It also says the notion that Babieno predicted 10 million copies sold is just straight-up wrong, a product of wonky translation.

The studio said that it felt the need to “take the floor” and comment publicly on the issue, even though—like most companies—it generally prefers not to “comment on rumours,” clarifying that it is “not true that we have announced that Silent Hill 2 is ready for release,” and that the 10 million figure referred to the “potential success of the types of games [Bloober] will be focusing on in future”.

So stand down, folks. Bloober Team says it’s “aware that players are waiting for more information about Silent Hill 2,” and that Konami will share it “as soon as such information becomes available”. Which isn’t today, I suppose.

I’m not sure how I feel about the Silent Hill 2 remake. I’d like to stay cautiously optimistic, but I’ve not been bowled over by any Bloober Team games I’ve played so far. Bloober promises to stick close to the original (opens in new tab), which might alleviate some fans’ concerns, but we’ll just have to wait and see with this one. I’ve never had a chance to play Silent Hill 2, so I hope the studio pulls it off.


Source link

Man caught obviously smuggling CPUs under his clothes

There’s an old adage that says if you’re going to do some crime, then at least try to be smart about it. That way, even if you get caught you have a chance to come off as some sort of Ocean’s Eleven heist genius, as opposed to this guy who tried to get through Chinese customs with 239 Intel Core processors obviously strapped to his person. Chinese site Kuai Technology (opens in new tab) (via SweClockers (opens in new tab)) has shared this Darwinian tale of one man’s attempt to bring this cache of CPUs into the country. 

Close your eyes with me and envision for a moment that you are a customs worker at the Gongbei Port Passenger Inspection Hall. Your day has probably been pretty uneventful so far but at about 20:10pm you spot a man walking towards the gates.

His large black clothing is comically oversized, and bulges in clearly not human ways at the waist and thighs. You can see clear cornered shapes under the clothes and the person inside of them seems excessively awkward.

The man makes for the “no declaration channel” of entry. You nudge your co-worker and say something along the lines of “Are you seeing this?” in an incredulous tone. They are indeed seeing this and nod as such. You play rock paper scissors to decide who has to go talk to the man. You lose, and your night just got a whole lot more interesting.

During the inspection, customs officers found a total of 239 fully packaged CPUs strapped to the smuggler’s body. They were held to his waist, abdomen, and thighs with tape creating that wonderful silhouette that betrayed his efforts. The photos shared almost look more like someone strapped up with plastic explosives, so in reality we are thankful they were just CPUs instead.

The pics also reveal that at least a chunk of the CPUs are among Intel’s latest offerings with the Core i5-13400F (opens in new tab). These may be on the budget end when it comes to gaming CPUs, but they’re easily one of the best on offer. It packs 10 cores at a very friendly price under $200 (opens in new tab). If the bulk of the haul is around this price point, that’s nearly $50k worth of product, assuming the cache didn’t contain more expensive chips.

There’s no word on the punishment yet, but I’d wager this guy regrets his choice in airport attire. If you’re in need of a new chip, we recommend checking out our list of best CPUs for gaming (opens in new tab) before you decide. This is a good reminder that you should always get your computer parts from a reputable source, rather than risk getting someone’s ex mining rig or something smuggled poorly under some strangers clothes.


Source link

How to play the original Fortnite map with Fortnite Creative 2.0

Fortnite Creative 2.0 is now live, granting players access to develop maps, gamemodes, animations, and more. While you can create anything in this shiny sandbox, players are flocking towards the familiar: the OG Fortnite map from Season 1. 

If you don’t have a time machine handy, it’s all good. We got you covered on how you can drop into Tilted Towers like it’s 2017.

This shockingly robust tech utilizes the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, and is available free for everyone to play with. Currently only PC players can develop their own projects inside the Unreal Editor (opens in new tab), but you’re able to play these creations on any device or console. Atlas Creative was the first developer to take their stab at recreating Fortnite Chapter 1, and you can easily access it by searching for it in the custom games tab or inputting the island code 2179-7822-3395.

(Image credit: Epic Games)

Almost everything in the ATLAS OG BATTLE ROYALE replica is the same as Fortnite Chapter 1 Season 3; you’re able to drop in old points of interest like Dusty Depot, pick up classic weapons, and most importantly: reminisce back to when it was all so simple.

Currently this custom map is in beta, and there are some issues with noticeably more lag than the standard modes, a lack of named locations on the map (so you only know where you’re dropping if you played way too much Fortnite in 2017) and there are a few less players than what you’re used to in solo Battle Royale. Building is also permanently enabled in this mode, so if you’ve spent the last year forgetting that was a feature, you are liable to get rinsed. Good luck out there.

Fortunately Atlas is asking for players to send feedback directly to them so they can update promptly, so if you’re playing a bunch of this retro Fortnite Creative 2.0 map, you should let them know your thoughts.


Source link

Steam will ditch Windows 7 and 8 support next year



If you’re reading this on a PC running Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, then it’s bad news, I’m afraid: Steam won’t work on your computer next year. Valve announced as much today, and it’s all because of Google Chrome.

“The newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows,” Valve’s typically curt announcement reads. “In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.”



Source link

Don’t bother playings loads of CS:GO now if you want in on the Counter-Strike 2 test, Valve doesn’t care

The thought crossed my mind, too: I didn’t get into the Counter-Strike 2 limited test, but what if I jump into CS:GO for a few nights, boost my playtime, and see if Valve’s light shines bright on me? As Valve detailed (opens in new tab) last week on Twitter, Counter-Strike 2 test participants have been selected based on a variety of factors, including “recent playtime on Valve official servers, trust factor, and Steam account standing.”

Turns out, there’s a clear limit on Valve’s definition of “recent” playtime. The official Counter-Strike Twitter broke the news today for returning CS:GO players hoping for a lucky break:

“Idling on official matchmaking servers in CS:GO does not increase your chances of making into the CS2 Limited Test,” the tweet reads. “The playtime that counts was your playtime prior to the start of the Limited Test.”

See more

In other words: if you’re not already in, don’t bother.

Harsh, but fair. Valve is looking for the most dedicated, hardest-core CS veterans to test and ins and outs of Counter-Strike 2, and I certainly don’t fit the bill. I’ve only clocked a measly 70 hours in CS:GO, and most of that was in 2013. People have birthed and raised fourth graders since the last time I earned a CS:GO skin. And if you have ten times my playtime under your belt, you might’ve been disqualified for other reasons, like having a record of toxicity or cheating. Or, you just got unlucky.

If it makes you feel any better, it doesn’t sound like we’re missing much. Counter-Strike 2 is shaping up to be largely the same game as CS:GO. It’s a pseudo-sequel to a live service game, similar to Overwatch 2, except instead of new heroes and maps, CS2’s tentpole features are smokier smoke grenades, better servers, and backwards skin compatibility. There’s also only one map right now (you guessed it, Dust 2).

It’s all minor stuff, but I bet it feels like big stuff if you’ve played enough CS:GO to be plucked by Valve for this test.

Still, that doesn’t stop me from wanting in to the exclusive club. Senior editor and seasoned Counter-Striker Rich Stanton managed to make it in, so check back here this week for hands-on CS2 impressions.



Source link

Chris Avellone accepts ‘seven-figure payment’ to settle libel suit with those who accused him of sexual misconduct

In June 2020 games writer Chris Avellone, best known for his work on Planescape Torment and the Fallout series, was accused of sexual misconduct on Twitter by two women (opens in new tab). At the time Avellone was silent beyond a few brief replies on Twitter (now deleted), but the accusations led to several studios publicly cutting ties with the writer. Around a year after the claims were first made, Avellone publicly denied them and launched a libel suit in California (opens in new tab) (later re-filed in Illinois), seeking damages for lost work, emotional distress, punitive damages, the costs of the suit, and an injunction against the accusers.

This suit has now been settled, and in a manner favourable to Avellone. His accusers, Karissa Barrows and Kelly Rae Bristol, have signed a joint statement retracting their claims. Ms. Barrows has requested her previous comments to the media be retracted. “Claims were dismissed with prejudice pursuant to a confidential settlement that provides for a seven-figure payment that includes the return of the attorney fee award entered against Mr. Avellone in California.”

The settlement details are confidential, but there are public statements (opens in new tab) from both sides:

“Mr. Avellone never sexually abused either of us. We have no knowledge that he has ever sexually abused any women. We have no knowledge that Mr. Avellone has ever misused corporate funds. Anything we have previously said or written about Mr. Avellone to the contrary was not our intent.

“We wanted to support women in the industry. In so doing, our words have been misinterpreted to suggest specific allegations of misconduct that were neither expressed nor intended. We are passionate about the safety, security and agency of women, minorities, LGBTQIA+ persons, and every other community that has seen persecution in the video game industry. We believe Mr. Avellone shares a desire to protect and uplift those communities. We believe that he deserves a full return to the industry and support him in those endeavors.”

The above is from Karissa Barrows and Kelly Rae Bristol. 

“I appreciate the willingness of Ms. Barrows and Ms. Bristol to work with us in addressing issues within the game community, and their advocacy is to be commended and supported,” says Avellone’s statement. “There are still many very real challenges that we face but am confident we can face them together.

“In the spirit of these goals, I would ask everyone to respect the privacy of Ms. Barrows and Ms. Bristol and use this opportunity as a means to listen to all voices in improving our culture and our communities.”

This is quite the turnaround and vindication for Avellone, who became a pariah in the immediate aftermath of the accusations. He was fired from Dying Light 2, people demanded that companies with any association with Avellone publicly denounce him, and follow-up reporting added fuel to the raging fire (opens in new tab), with further accusations being made and Avellone described as “fucking disgusting” among many other things.

“I wanted to thank everyone on both sides who chose not to rush to judgment but instead were willing to listen and let the legal process take its course, let the facts come out on both sides, and come to a resolution,” wrote Avellone on Twitter (opens in new tab) after posting the settlement statement.

Everyone knows that contemporary social media can ruin someone’s career and reputation within hours. This settlement may be confidential, but the seven figure sum and the statements made by all parties show that, when it comes to these specific claims, Avellone was wronged. Whether he will manage that “full return to the industry” remains to be seen.



Source link