Looking for a helping hand to guide you through today’s Wordle? Then you’ll want to sneak a cheeky peek at our hint for the March 19 (1004) puzzle. Need something more, like a full shove towards today’s answer? Then you’re in luck because the solution is only a single click away.

Wow, today’s game really put up a fight. My very promising start felt great in the moment, it’s just a shame it didn’t seem to lead anywhere for far too many follow-up guesses. The Wordle win streak saving turnaround at the last minute did help make it all feel worthwhile in the end, though.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Tuesday, March 19

The CHIPS Act was signed into law in August 2022. Its aim is to boost US based semiconductor manufacturing, and not just for commercial reasons, but for broader strategic reasons including the desire to reduce reliance on manufacturing in Asia. Some of the money allocated to woo chipmakers onto US soil is soon to flow, with Samsung, Intel and TSMC set to receive billions in grants and subsidies.

Bloomberg reports that Samsung is poised to receive $6 billion in federal funding, TSMC is set to secure over $5 billion while Intel could receive as much as $10 billion. All three companies have US based fabs planned or under construction.

Balance has been restored to the Force. The well-liked Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster was followed by a Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection that’s not quite so well-liked. Among the early complaints was the fact the trailer showed a mod had been incorporated without the permission of the modder. Aspyr, the studio behind this remaster, swore  the actual release version wouldn’t use anyone else’s “code or content” without permission. And, while it’s since been patched out, that didn’t turn out to be true. On both PC and PlayStation, the launch version did indeed incorporate a mod that restored Asajj Ventress as a playable character. 

Ventress was exclusive to the Xbox version of Battlefront 2 back in 2005, but modder iamashaymin reskinned Aayla Secura to sneak her into the PC Version. That’s why you can tell the footage captured in the Battlefront Classic Collection depicts iamashaymin’s mod: Ventress is using Secura’s animations and lightsabers. (Funnily enough, later versions of the mod do have Ventress’s animations, so Aspyr hadn’t even been using an up-to-date version of it.)

Hearthstone turned 10 this week, which on a personal note means I’ve been playing, watching and writing about the same game for a decade. From the halcyon days of peak RNG being Sylvanas stealing your opponent’s Ragnaros, through the absolute degeneracy of Demon Hunter on day one, to the Colossals and Titans of the modern game, it’s been a great ride. I was chatting to a colleague who also covered the game back in its golden era, remembering how great it was when there seemed to be a new tournament on Twitch every other week and the esports scene was doing legitimately huge viewership. 

For years the game fizzed with a constant influx of Mensa-smart young players who generated new memes as fast as they did game-breaking decks. As with all games that last this long, that imperial phase couldn’t last forever, and none of us knew quite how good we’d had it until we were on the downslope. But even now I get excited before a new expansion—the nostalgia-heavy Whizbang’s Workshop is out next month—eager to see what madness the current designers have cooked up. 

“Ever notice that swinging the sword downward put you at a big disadvantage?” Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone asked earlier this week on Twitter. “It’s always bugged me, but I had tuned it that way so that the area of effect would match the visual. For 1.6, I decided that game feel is way more important than precise visual accuracy.”

I will admit that melee combat is not the first thing that leaps to mind when I think about Stardew Valley. It’s all about festivals and farmer’s markets and bringing in the crops and finding a life mate and hats and cats and hats on cats—but combat?