Reddit hunts down streamer’s stolen ‘dream car’, finds confused man who demands $10,000 before fleeing to massage parlour

Two days ago, tragedy struck.  In a video posted to YouTube (opens in new tab), former most-subbed Twitch streamer of all time Ludwig Ahgren announced that his “prize possession”—an imported 1997 Subaru Sambar microvan—had been stolen. It had been taken from outside the warehouse where Ahgren films his podcast—The Yard—during LA’s recent rainstorms (opens in new tab). The bad weather had knocked out the site’s power, meaning people leaving had been forced to leave the electric gate wide open and the Sambar ripe for the taking.

As reported by Kotaku (opens in new tab), it didn’t take the internet long to track the van down. Barely a day after Ahgren posted his video, a Reddit user named iwantaguineapig (opens in new tab) posted a video of the Sambar—parked in such a way that its licence plate was unreadable—in the LA neighbourhood of Sylmar. 

After a little bit of a runaround (the van had vanished the first time Ahgren, who is currently in Texas, could get someone to Sylmar to scope out the scene), Ahgren’s assistant Nick Yingling and collaborator Anthony Bruno tracked down the van in the same spot that evening. Unable to get the cops to come and lend a hand, they decided to just use their own van key and take it back themselves. There was just one problem: Someone was in it.

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As you can see in the video above, Yingling only noticed the driver’s shadow—emitting a breathless “There’s-someone-in-the-car!”—at the precise moment they opened the door, prompting the pair to beat feet away from the van in fear of a confrontation neither of them were prepared for. But instead of a hardened criminal, they found a slightly perplexed man.

Realising they had not disturbed the Al Capone of Japanese microvan theft, Yingling and Bruno began negotiating. “Hey bro, we’ve gotta take it back,” said one of the pair, to which the figure in the van responded “Take what back?” The video posted to Twitter cuts off shortly thereafter, but we know what happened thanks to an update video posted by Ahgren (opens in new tab) yesterday.

According to Ahgren, the figure sitting in the Sambar told Yingling and Bruno that he was not the one responsible for stealing it. Instead, he said it had been given to him in lieu of cash by an associate who owed him money. Then, in a move that’s honestly kind of admirable for its brazenness, he said he’d return the car if the pair—who had their own working key and to whom the van clearly belonged—gave him $10,000, almost double the $5,500 Ahgren originally paid for it (minus import fees).

When Yingling decided that calling the cops again would be a better option, the guy in the van slammed the door shut and took off in the van. But rather than sell or stash his hot property, he drove it to a massage parlour, where it was spotted by another Reddit user named suufferPNG (opens in new tab) the next day. This time, the cops did show up, prompting the van’s driver—who was in the process of loading the van up to leave—to flee on foot. Yingling was there shortly after, the truck was recovered, and all was well a mere two days after Ahgren’s original video announcing the theft was posted.

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There’s probably a moral here, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what it is. Sometimes the collective power of the internet can achieve positive ends? That one sounds a little dicey. How about: Don’t steal incredibly recognisable vehicles from celebrities with millions of fans, and then super don’t just drive them to a public parking lot outside a massage parlour in broad daylight after being confronted about it? That’s a lesson we can all learn from.



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The Settlers: New Allies review

Need to Know

What is it? An RTS/city builder hybrid with a once-beloved franchise name.
Release date Feb 17, 2023
Expect to pay $60/£50
Developer Ubisoft Blue Byte
Publisher Ubisoft
Reviewed on Core i7 9700K, RTX 2080 TI, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck N/A
Link Official site (opens in new tab)

The Settlers’ raison d’etre, back in the series’ ‘90s salad days, was to make building cities and armies fun and accessible. In a period when Command & Conquer was as ubiquitous as COD is today and Age of Empires was life itself, it made sense to see cute characters in chocolate box towns offering an alternative to younger or less experienced strategy players. I was one of them—happily building up Roman cities in 1998’s The Settlers III without the faintest clue about supply chains or damage stats. It was a foot in the door to the harder, more thoughtful stuff. 

Unfortunately for The Settlers: New Allies in 2023, once you’ve walked through that door and spent any amount of time with the harder and more thoughtful stuff there’s really no going back to this. 13 years after the last Settlers release, Ubisoft Blue Byte, a talented studio with many fastidiously crafted Anno games also to its name, can’t seem to find a way for the cutesy aesthetics, paper-thin combat mechanics and city building to all come together in a modern context.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

I spent a long time lamenting the absence of a fast forward button in this game. It’s a puzzling omission given that previous Settlers did allow the player to speed up time as they pleased, and perhaps the intention behind it is to force you to focus on your production chain instead of swanning blithely along without noticing that your sawmill’s been without lumber for days on end. But if that is the case, it’s a misguided bit of design.

Instead of sharpening my focus on the minutiae, watching everything play out at the pace of a tectonic plate only led to festering resentment. The production chain from raw resources to units and items ought to be this game’s best bit, a chance to carefully plan the placement of all the beautifully modelled buildings and cast a benevolent eye over each of their roles in turning, for example, stone blocks into hammers for engineers. Or iron ore into iron ingots into axes for soldiers. As you dig deeper into the campaign and your settlements become more complex, there is enjoyment to be found here, building efficient little clusters of buildings and watching people run resources between them in well-drilled fashion.

In these moments, when it’s all working, The Settlers: New Allies does a convincing impression of a game that newcomers to strategy and city-building would enjoy. There’s something about the bright colours and the string section in the soundtrack that just relaxes you. Something about the way residences snap together in little terraces as you place them, with bridges over roads, that scratches your itch for order and even quaintness in this cynical, chaotic world. It’s wholesome. Friendly. Easy to read.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Six hours later, though, ‘easy to read’ has turned into ‘frustratingly shallow’. When a problem pops up in the logistics of your town, the root cause is almost always that a quarry or lumber mill has run out of harvestable stone or wood. There’s a clear solution to that, and it’s placing a quarry or a lumber mill near some more stone or trees. But from the point at which you realise you’re out of iron to the moment warriors start walking out of your barracks again, several eternities feel like they’ve passed. It’s not a meaty logistical challenge to solve, just a long-winded one. 

And that would be acceptable, just about, if the RTS half of the game was deep and engrossing. But this is The Settlers—even in its MS-DOS pomp, all you ever had to do to achieve military supremacy was recruit a throng of warriors and right-click on an enemy tower. So it proves here, too. You can zoom in on the fracas and observe each axe-swing in more detail now, but it’s hardly Total War happening down there. Health bars deplete with little to no regard for flank angles, unit fatigue or elevation advantage. The tactical element of combat only reaches as far as your army composition—high-health, low-DPS guardians, high-DPS warriors and ranged archer and arbalist units—but even then, I suspect that simply having an overall numerical advantage is all the ‘tactics’ you need to win most fights.

There’s worse news on the technical front: a sturdy fortress this is not. In multiplayer skirmishes lag issues are the fiercest enemy of all, causing settlers to stand stock still and utterly refuse to be selected. It’s a smoother ride in single-player, but I did still have several loading screen freezes and just a couple of crashes to desktop just after loading a save.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

No redemption can be found in the campaign’s surprisingly dialogue-heavy story, either. You’re journeying between the islands of a beautiful tropical archipelago, fending off bandits and searching for stolen treasure and artefacts, but doing so looks a lot like building settlements repeatedly and then clicking the cutscene icon above your base’s headquarters after hitting certain objectives. Like everything else here the characters and dialogue are endearingly naive and wholesome, like a European chocolate advert dubbed in English, but that’s not sufficient to get you invested in the plight of your people. 

A good RTS campaign should pose a very specific challenge in each mission, the way Starcraft II’s original campaign does. You rip up your previous playbook and stroke your chin about how to navigate a new environmental obstacle or resource constraint. There isn’t enough of that here. The scale of the operation you’re managing grows, but it doesn’t feel fresh from one act to the next.

There are very specific terms upon which you can enjoy this game, however. Every fibre of it seems intended to relax and comfort you, from the painterly and bucolic scenes that Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine conjures up to the utterly forgettable but nonetheless tranquil campaign plot arcs. For a game in which you’re regularly sending scores of humans to their doom or massacring enemies in their dozens, it’s oddly peaceful.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

And there is some value for genre newcomers and younger players, too. What might seem oversimplified to one player might be a handy entry point to another, although those aforementioned technical issues don’t discriminate by experience level. 

Maybe I’m looking for positives this hard simply because it’s so difficult to kick a game that seems so earnest, and so keen to make you like it. It feels like shooing away a dimwitted and badly behaved but extremely cute puppy. Longtime Settlers fans are perhaps better served by the upcoming Pioneers of Pagonia, whose developer Envision Entertainment includes founders of the original Settlers games. But for greener strategy players who don’t want to be subsumed by complicated mechanics, or just nostalgic armchair generals in dire need of relaxation, there’s something here. If you have the patience.


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One of Bing’s new ChatGPT personalities wrote me some seriously puggy fanfic

You can now change the personality of Bing’s ChatGPT integration to either be more entertaining or give you just the facts, ma’am. At the start of a ‘chat,’ you can now select to change from the default ‘More Balanced’ personality to either a ‘More Creative’ or ‘More Precise’ personality for the popular chatbot.

Microsoft details the three different personality types as:

  • More Creative: “Responses are original and imaginative, creating surprise and entertainment for you.”
  • More Balanced: “Responses are reasonable and coherent, balancing accuracy and creativity in conversation.”
  • More Precise: “Responses are factual and concise, prioritising accuracy and relevancy for you.”

Microsoft reckons these different chat mode selectors will be available to about 90% of Bing users who can access the chat function. It has also added a shortcut to Bing’s chat feature in the native search bar of Windows 11, which I’m certain lots of people are really digging /s.

Of course, I had to test out the new ‘personalities’ myself quickly, so I asked it to tell me a story. On the creative setting, it asked me what kind of story I wanted, and I simply told it, “pugs in space.” And this is what I got:

(Image credit: Microsoft)

**Pugs in Space: The Galactic Adventure**

Major Ron was a brave and loyal pug who loved to explore the galaxy with his human companion, Captain Lisa. They were part of a special team called Galaxy Pugs, who were on a mission to observe and learn about different planets and life forms.

One day, they received a distress signal from Planet Pugtopia, a world where pugs lived in harmony and happiness. The signal said that an evil alien named Zorg had invaded the planet and was trying to enslave all the pugs. Major Ron and Captain Lisa decided to help their fellow pugs and set course for Planet Pugtopia.

The interesting thing here is that I wasn’t aware of the Pugs in Space (opens in new tab) comic, which features the character of Major Ron and a character called Taser based on Ron’s IRL pugmate, Lisa. The Pugs in Space comic is referenced at the end of the story on the chat page as a source, alongside The Sun and the BBC. Obviously. 

But where it was meant to be “original and creative,” the Creative personality has simply taken an existing character and created its own fanfic around it.

When I switched things up to the Balanced setting, it again asked what kind of story I would like, but this time it immediately flagged up that there were existing Pugs in Space literature when I prompted it to tell me a story with the same prompt. It then asked if I wanted to use those sources to inspire or tell a new story. 

Of course, I wanted a new story and explained that I wanted it set in a far-flung future where they discover a new alien species. And so…

Bing conversation style

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Pugs in Space: First Contact

Captain Pugston was nervous. He had been chosen to lead the first pug expedition to explore the outer rim of the galaxy, where no pug had gone before. He was proud of his crew, a team of six brave and loyal pugs who had trained for years to be part of this historic mission. They were:

– Lieutenant Puggles, the pilot and navigator

– Doctor Pugbert, the medic and biologist

– Engineer Pugly, the mechanic and technician

– Sergeant Pugger, the security and weapons expert

– Ensign Puggy, the communications and linguistics specialist

– And Puglet, the mascot and morale booster

I really don’t know what happened at the end. It was like Bing was having a bit of an episode and was maybe done with writing about pugs at this point, so I just wanted to get it over with. I guess that’s where the balance between creativity and being concise kinda clash.

So then we come to the Precise personality, which I can leave here in its entirety. It actually didn’t even ask me what sort of story I wanted when I prompted it to tell me one, it just started going on about some princess in a castle, and I had to pull it up to tell me a story about pugs in space.

I tested it a couple of times—repeating the princess/castle trope again—and once more, it went straight into some fanfiction about Major Ron, Lieutenant Lola, and Taser. Even this dullard is a big fan, obvs.

But the following is the original response it wrote when I first tested the more boring personality.

Bing conversation style

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Once upon a time in a galaxy far away, there was a group of brave pugs who were on a mission to explore the universe. They traveled in their spaceship, the Pug-1, and visited many different planets.

On one planet they discovered a race of friendly aliens who loved to play fetch. The pugs had so much fun playing with their new friends that they decided to stay for a while.

As they continued their journey through space, the pugs encountered many other exciting adventures and made lots of new friends along the way. They proved that even small dogs can have big dreams and achieve great things.

Honestly, it’s actually concise enough that my three year-old would probably quite like a picture book made out of it. So I’m going to give this to Stable Diffusion and see what it can make out of it.

It’s interesting how Microsoft is constantly evolving its ChatGPT integration in a bid to make Bing somehow relevant. It has been tightening and loosening constraints on what the chatbot can say in recent times, which have at times dulled or excited its responses. 

We have our own concerns about what it will mean for content (opens in new tab) on the internet, but still it’s fascinating to see it growing before our eyes. 


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Wo Long’s technical issues are driving players up the wall, but its controls could be a bigger problem

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty came out today, but it could probably have used a little extra time in the oven. Players across the internet are complaining about all sorts of technical problems with the game’s PC version: dropped frames, stuttering, issues with shaders, and other  performance issues that have become disturbingly common in PC ports over the past couple of years. But that might not even be the worst of it, players using a keyboard and mouse to play the game are reporting some truly baffling design choices with Wo Long’s controls.

You don’t have to go far to find players complaining about technical problems. Only 31% of Wo Long’s 2,331 user reviews (opens in new tab) are positive at time of writing, and many of the negative ones mention the game’s performance. One review from a user named AloneInSilence (opens in new tab) sums it up, calling the game “Unplayable” due to “Constant stuttering, regular freezes, occasional crashes,” which happen “in gameplay, in cutscenes, and even navigating menus”. Issues like these were also present in the game’s demo (video below), and it seems the full game is no different.

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Over on Reddit, a user called Individual-Error5651 (opens in new tab) complains that their Game Pass version of Wo Long is inexplicably locked at 720p on their RTX 3060, but somehow still only manages to run at 10-15 frames per second.

But for every lament about Wo Long’s technical issues, there’s one from a frustrated keyboard and mouse user driven to distraction by the game’s keyboard and mouse controls. A user named cashews (opens in new tab) calls Wo Long “A good game buried deep beneath the biggest catastrophe of a PC port that I have ever seen,” noting the game’s technical issues but declaring that “the biggest issue are the controls”. 

“If you don’t move your mouse fast enough, the camera will not react, regardless of your mouse sensitivity,” said cashews, who reckons Wo Long’s devs have imported the deadzones of a gamepad’s analogue sticks over to the game’s mouse-based controls. “The key layout is also an absolute joke,” they add, “Deflect/Dodge bound to Tab by default? Ok then”.

“Played slightly under an hour on Mouse and Keyboard,” said a reviewer called T.E.S (opens in new tab), but the sluggish mouse-controlled camera made them “feel unwell,” forcing them to put the game down.

To be fair to Wo Long, gamepads have always had an edge over a trusty old keyboard and mouse setup when it comes to action-heavy, Souls-like games such as these, but it sounds like Wo Long’s keyboard controls are bad even by that standard. Some players report a measure of success reconfiguring the layout, but it can only do so much in the face of the issues with the game’s camera mentioned above.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we complained that PC players were fed up with one shitty PC port after another (opens in new tab), and it looks like Wo Long is yet another example to add to the pile. It’s a shame, since the game itself is pretty great beyond the performance and control issues (a fact noted by a lot of the negative reviews). Sam Greer was very positive about the game in our Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty review (opens in new tab), praising it as “exceptionally accomplished” aside from its “technical blemishes”. 

Hopefully, the game will get some prompt patches to bring it up to snuff, but it’d be much, much better if companies just stopped releasing games in this state in the first place.



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PC memory market went down the pan in 2022 like everything else

Give it up for the good ship DRAM, the latest component to set sail and fall off the world’s edge at the end of 2022. According to TrendForce, DRAM sales revenue fell 32.5% between the third, fourth, and final quarter in 2022.

That means DRAM has now joined CPUs, which dropped 21% year-on-year (opens in new tab), and GPUs, down 50% (opens in new tab), in nose diving into the new year. TrendForce says the fall in revenue in this case doesn’t reflect a drop in unit sales so much as average selling prices plummeting.

Of the big three DRAM producers, it was Micron that was hit hardest (opens in new tab), with revenues dropping by a painful 41.2%. The biggest vendor, Samsung, experienced a 25.1% drop, while number two incumbent SK Hynix saw revenues fall by 35.2%.

Apparently Samsung cut prices most aggressively, leading to its market share increasing from 40.7% to 45.1%. In other words, Samsung had something of a fire sale, selling off a load of DRAM for cheap.

PC memory generally, of course, is rather more of a liquid, commodity market than CPUs and GPUs. While compatibility isn’t quite universal for a given memory type, it’s far easier to switch from one vendor to another for your DDR4 or DDR5 sticks in response to price.

Ditching Intel CPUs for AMD chips is rather more complicated. Meanwhile, when it comes to graphics cards, with only two major vendors (OK, three if you want to count new entrant Intel), there arguably aren’t enough options to force prices down rapidly when demand slumps.

And so, RAM prices have fallen dramatically—even 32GB of DDR5 can now be had for under $100 (opens in new tab)—while GPU prices remain sky high, despite much, much lower demand. It’s a funny old situation.


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No Vampire Survivors sequel for us unless its creator comes up with something ‘radically new’

Our favourite roguelike of 2022 (opens in new tab) isn’t likely to get a sequel any time soon. In a chat with GameSpot (opens in new tab), Vampire Survivors creator Luca Galante said that, unless he devised some way to “offer something radically new” with a potential Vampire Survivors 2, a sequel would remain “unlikely”.

It’s not like Galante is packing it in entirely on Vampire Survivors, mind you. The reason he’s apathetic about a sequel is because he feels like the current game provides a good foundation to expand upon. “With the way Vampire Survivors is designed, we can deliver both new content and new game mechanics on the existing game,” he said, “so why make a sequel?” That goes for a “spiritual successor,” too. Galante seems wholly committed to the game he’s already made.

It’s vaguely amusing, given the deluge of Vampire Survivors clones (opens in new tab) we saw after the game took off last year, that Galante has no desire to make one himself, but it makes sense. If Galante can do everything he wants to do with the platform he already has—one which has already attracted a passionate fanbase that’s absolutely rabid for new content—why leave it to dry up while he works on a sequel? 

It reminds me a bit of how the Among Us devs cancelled their planned sequel (opens in new tab) when that game took off during the pandemic. There’s just not much reason to mess with a good thing. So, until Galante can figure out something “radically new,” he’s sticking to his DLC plan for the game we have. It seems to be working: The game’s first DLC, Legacy of the Moonspell, currently enjoys a 96% positive rating on Steam based on over 1500 reviews. 

Plus, the game’s fans are as dedicated as ever, with even Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer finding over ten days of free time to 100% the game in its current state (opens in new tab), despite overseeing the biggest corporate acquisition in gaming history.


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Valve just enabled native ray tracing on the Steam Deck and it actually looks pretty wild

So yeah, ray tracing on the Steam Deck (opens in new tab) is now properly a thing. It’s been do-able if you wanted to dig in and do some Linux-y tweaking before, but with the latest beta OS Valve is starting to go native. For a device that costs less than the price of an RTX 3050 (opens in new tab)—a graphics card no-one should buy at that price—to be able to enable ray tracing that’s worth a damn is seriously impressive.

Valve has announced the new Steam Deck OS beta (opens in new tab) in the handheld’s Preview channel, and updates the operating system of the device to the Mesa 23.1 graphics driver. So far, so dry, but the interesting stuff is in what that actually means in terms of games. For one, it gets rid of some graphical corruption issues that exist with the current build of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (opens in new tab) and GPU crashes “in several upcoming titles.”

The update also enables ray tracing in Doom Eternal.

What business has the Steam Deck running the graphically intensive pretties of ray tracing? You may ask. But Deck developer, Pierre-Loup Griffais, who took to twitter to make the announcement has also demonstrated the performance of Doom Eternal with it enabled.

They posted a screenshot in the thread, confirmed to have been taken on the Deck, with a performance overlay enabled showing the frame rate at 35 fps, with an attendant frame time graph that is seemingly rock solid at that speed. 

Doom Eternal isn’t the last word in overblown ray tracing effects, but its implementation is a smart use of the technology to enhance lighting and reflections throughout the game. As such it doesn’t have high entry requirements for enabling ray tracing, with the 1080p minimum spec (opens in new tab) given as an RTX 2060.

The tech comes through the Vulkan graphics API direct, rather than DXR through a Proton layer, which can add some drag to the frame rate of a DirectX game.

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But Griffais does say that: “DXR is in the pipe, just not quite ready yet.” 

The idea that we’ll actually have the ability to enable DirectX Raytracing natively on the Steam Deck is pretty wild. I mean, performance on DXR titles is likely to be tougher on the Deck’s GPU hardware than with Doom Eternal, but it’s something I’ll be interested to check out for sure.

I’ve been playing with ray tracing on Linux a lot recently, after sticking PopOS! on my RTX 3080-powered Razer Blade 15. I was stunned to be able to get both DLSS and ray tracing running at playable ultra RT settings on the machine in Cyberpunk 2077 through the bleeding edge versions of Proton.

Thank you, Glorious Eggroll. 

But that requires some pre-launch arguments to run, and doesn’t work for The Witcher 3. The idea of not having to worry about such Linux-y tweakery on a Steam Deck is tantalising. Even if the performance on its Aerith APU is unlikely to be super-slick on something so demanding.



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LG trash talks Samsung for OLED burn-in issues

LG Display has taken the unusual move of directly calling out arch rival Samsung for OLED burn-in problems. During a press event earlier this week (opens in new tab), LG shared images produced in independent testing showing burn in on Samsung’s S95B OLED set after just two months.

LG also shared images of Sony’s A95K, another OLED TV that uses Samsung panel tech, also showing burn in. All of the images were generated by Rtings as part of their TV Accelerated Longevity Test (opens in new tab). To make its point, LG compared those images to Rtings’ results with its own G2 and C2 OLED TVs, both of which had no signs of burn in or image retention.

LG then went on to explain that its OLED panels are less susceptible to burn in due to the use of white subpixels. According to LG, that allows their panels to produce brighter images without wearing out the critical RGB subpixels. Samsung’s OLED tech, by contrast, is pure RGB, making it more prone to burn-in by LG argument.

Meanwhile, Samsung has always espoused the view that a pure RGB subpixel delivers more accurate colors. Samsung also claims improved heat management for its OLED panels, along with a new HyperEfficient Electroluminescence material that is said to reduce the risk of burn in.

Of course, the Rtings results are but a single data point. Moreover, testing methodology can make a huge difference to the results with this kind of thing. By way of example, Rtings has already made major adjustments to its methodology despite the testing only being in place for a few months.

“After we launched our two-year longevity test, a few users were quick to point out a major flaw in our schedule. It didn’t allow Sony OLED TVs to run their compensation cycles, as Sony TVs only start this process after the TV has been off for four hours. We’ve adjusted our schedule to make sure this process has time to complete,” Rtings says.

Could Samsung’s OLEDs be falling foul of a similar methodology quirk? Time will tell, but this one seems likely to run and run as the two big beast of OLED technology fight it out for supremacy.

It’s also worth noting that, for now, Samsung’s QD-OLED panels seem to have a distinct advantage when it comes to brightness over large screen areas. Both in testing from multiple sources and in our subjective experience, Samsung OLED panels are quite a bit brighter when much the majority of the panel is showing bright image data.

Actual testing typically shows LG panels hitting around 150 nits compared to roughly 250 nits for Samsung panels when the proportion of the panel being lit up hits 70% to 80% or more.

Every currently-available OLED gaming monitor uses either LG or Samsung panel tech. Alienware was first out of the gate with a Samsung panel in the Alienware 34 (opens in new tab), while the big BenQ (opens in new tab) and Corsair (opens in new tab) monitors we tested recently are LG based.

So, the question now is whether that superior Samsung brightness comes at a greater risk of burn in. Watch this space. And if you’re watching it on a OLED panel, maybe check in occasionally rather than leave the page loaded up, if you know what we mean.


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Wordle hint and answer #622: Friday, March 3

Win today’s Wordle (opens in new tab) in record time: just scroll or click straight down to answer. Prefer a little help instead? Got it. You’ll find a helpful hint for the March 3 (622) puzzle on this very page, or if you’d rather read some tips and guides that’ll make every Wordle day a little better, you’ll find those here too.

The greens and yellows in front of me told me I had it; I just needed to find one last letter and do a little housekeeping. Could I see today’s answer? Not for an embarrassingly long time, but I did enjoy the relief of finally seeing it all fall into place—eventually.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Friday, March 3

There are a few equally valid meanings for today’s puzzle. The first is an alternative word for crouching; legs bent, body close to but not on the ground. Another is to live in or occupy a building without the owner’s permission. This word can also describe someone or something short and wide, often in a visually unappealing way. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

There are no repeat letters 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: Josh Wardle)

What is the Wordle #622 answer?

Some days there just aren’t enough guesses. The answer to the March 3 (622) Wordle is SQUAT. 

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 2: ABOVE
  • March 1: MOOSE
  • February 28: POLKA
  • February 27: WORSE
  • February 26: SYRUP
  • February 25: FIFTY
  • February 24: ARBOR
  • February 23: VAGUE
  • February 22: RIPER
  • February 21: RUDDY

Learn more about Wordle 

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. 


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People just won’t stop buying RTX 3060 graphics cards

If there’s one thing I remember from high school biology, it’s that the GPU is the powerhouse of the PC. Ask PC gamers what build they’re running, the first words out of their mouth will usually be the name of the graphics card their beast is packing. Even the CPU, the brains of the whole operation, will often be left playing second fiddle. It’s the part we dedicate most of our PC spending, bragging, and drooling on.

The GPU can also say a lot about what you’re is trying to achieve from a build. Someone running a tight setup with a 4000 series Nvidia card, for example, is looking to get the best of the best without care for the cost. Older cards paint a picture too. Someone with a 1080 is likely to be attractive, smart, and responsible with money regardless of how much they desperately want something better.

Steam’s video card stats (opens in new tab) paint a broad picture of the PC gaming community, giving us a look into what’s popular en masse. Currently, they’re telling a story that sees many turning to the previous generation’s mid-ranged RTX 3060, with the popularity of these cards actually increasing as the current generation rolls out.

The RTX 3060 (opens in new tab) was rolling along quite nicely in October last year as one of the fastest growing cards on Steam, but with the release of new cards, holiday sales and gift-giving we saw those numbers start to drop off over November. Not hugely, but enough to harken in a new generation of cards as expected.

The following months were fairly steady for 3060 uptake, but in February we saw the highest numbers since the previous December. The percentage of 3060 users on Steam appears set to grow further as it currently sits in fifth place for popularity on the platform (opens in new tab). That’s behind much older cards, its equivalent 3060 laptop GPU, and the RTX 2060.  

But these numbers don’t really surprise me much. It felt like Nvidia’s 30 series barely saw the light of day before the 4000s came careening around the corner. While powerful cards, the new series are huge, have massive power draws, and are wildly expensive. 

When an RTX 3060 (opens in new tab) goes for under $USD400 and the cheaper RTX 4070 Ti (opens in new tab) is still sitting at over $800, it makes a lot of sense. Perhaps the 4070 will come in at a better price (opens in new tab), but until then I doubt we’ll see many beyond the higher tier of enthusiasts rushing out to adopt the latest gen.

It’s also a good reminder of what the average PC gamer is actually running at home. It’s easy to get swept up in the hype of top-tier builds and want the most powerful piece of kit, but you don’t really need it for most games. The glorious GTX 1060 still sits in second place, surpassed only by the GTX 1650 (opens in new tab). Maybe I should be a little more respectful towards my own GTX 1080. It’s still higher on the popularity list than any 4000 series card.


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