Technologies

Pennies With Purpose: Smart and Simple Ways to Use the Disappearing Coin

The classic one-cent coin is being retired, but it still has purpose.

The penny — that lowly, grimy, circular piece of copper and zinc — is getting the last laugh. It’s been less than a month since the last one was minted on Nov. 12, and there are growing penny shortages all over the US. Stores are actually paying people to bring them in, and businesses fear they could lose millions of dollars.

What’s that old saying? You don’t miss something until it’s gone? Maybe the penny was more important than we thought. But that old one-cent coin had been fighting a losing battle for respect for years. You can’t buy anything with them anymore, not even a gumball. Most of us just toss them into a junk drawer or a glass jar. A sad penny can even lie on a sidewalk all day and not get scooped up.

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The US Mint printed the last pennies on Nov. 12, ending a 230-year run. According to the Mint, the cost of making the coin was 3.69 cents for every one-cent penny — hardly a smart return on investment for taxpayers.

However, with the discontinuation of penny production, some brick-and-mortar businesses across the country have been unable to give back exact change because they lack sufficient pennies, if any at all.

A Retail Industry Leaders Association survey revealed that thousands of stores have no pennies, and they are calling on the federal government to take action.

Grocery chain Price Chopper and Market 32 recently held a Double Exchange Day, where people brought in their pennies and received double the value back in the form of a shopping voucher. Similarly, grocery chain Giant Eagle offered gift cards worth twice the amount of pennies customers brought in during a one-day event on Nov. 1.

Millions at stake

CBS News asked several large companies how they would handle cash transactions if there were shortages of pennies at the counter. McDonald’s said the company’s restaurants would round up or down to the nearest nickel, meaning an order costing $12.43 would round up to $12.45, but an order costing $12.42 would round down to $12.40.

Wendy’s, Kwik Trip, and GoTo Foods — parent company of Auntie Anne’s, Cinnabon, Jamba and Carvel — all said they would round down to the nearest nickel in favor of the customer. Kroger will encourage customers to use exact change, but still accepts pennies as payment.

Rounding down is beneficial for consumers, but the National Association of Convenience Stores estimates that thousands of stores across the US could collectively lose more than $1 million a day by rounding down. The NACS wants US lawmakers to create a law that would allow businesses to round transactions up to the nearest nickel.

Until the federal government establishes guidelines or regulations on how to address the disappearing penny, things will remain chaotic for a while.

Others have ditched the penny

Mark Stiving, CEO of pricing strategy company Impact Pricing, said the discontinuation of the penny will have «almost zero impact» on consumers and businesses in the long run. And he’s got the receipts from New Zealand to prove it.

«What I think is about to happen is that companies will still put prices out in ‘9’s (like $49.99),» Stiving told CNET. According to Striving, New Zealand used the rounding method after demonetizing and phasing out its penny. «You’d still price something at $9.99, but you just rounded it to the nearest nickel. So whenever a transaction happened, it was always the nearest nickel.»

Be penny-wise and take action

You’re not going to find a fortune by foraging all the pennies in your home, unless you have an exceptionally rare one lying around. But if you dig around your bedroom, garage, kitchen and even your car, you might collect a few bucks worth. That’s not nothing. Would you let a five-dollar bill collect dust in a drawer? Of course not.

Find a Coinstar kiosk. You’ve likely walked by one of the company’s 17,000 machines without even noticing it, but this is a pretty handy way to convert those pennies and other coins into cash. The process is simple: Locate a kiosk (typically found inside a grocery store) and deposit your coins to receive a cash voucher, which you can redeem at checkout or at customer service. There is a service fee of nearly 13%, so if you redeem $100 worth of coins, you’ll get $87.

Wrap the coins and find a bank: Many banks and credit unions will accept your coins. They might have a coin-counting machine, or they may ask you to organize the coins into wrappers, which is time-consuming but also will give you an idea of just how many coins you’ve been stashing. There may or may not be a fee, depending on whether you’re an account holder. (Note: Some banks will not accept prewrapped coins; they must be counted out or machine-checked to ensure they are legitimate.) Yes, people do hide same-weight slugs inside coin rolls.)

Just spend them: Gone are the days when you could ride your horse down to the general store and buy something with a penny, but there are still a few holdouts. Dollar General offers a weekly Penny List featuring out-of-season or discontinued items that have been marked down to just one cent. Websites such as The Krazy Koupon Lady and The Freebie Guy provide weekly updates on what you can get for a penny at Dollar General — if those items haven’t already been removed from the shelves. Krazy Koupon Lady even has a Home Depot hack where you can get items for a penny.

Find a collector’s item: It’s highly unlikely, but you never know. The most valuable penny is a 1943-D Lincoln Wheat Cent Penny, which could fetch nearly $2.5 million. Or perhaps you have an 1880 Indian Head Cent, which could net you around $150. USA Coin Book’s list of valuable pennies is here.

Fun and skills for kids: Those pennies could help you level up your arts and crafts toolbox. Help kids learn about budgeting, create some art, do a science experiment — you’ve got options! Check out Greenlight’s ideas.

Is the nickel next to go?

The penny is just the latest US coin to be discontinued. The half-cent, the half-dime, the large cent, the double eagle and several others have all come and gone.

The nickel could be next. It costs nearly 14 cents to make, almost three times the face value of the five-cent coin. The primary problem is that nickels are comprised of 75% copper and 25% nickel, metals which have doubled in price over the past decade.

But it will be tougher to eliminate the nickel than the penny. Rounding up or down to the nearest dime could cost US taxpayers $56 million per year, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. That is significantly more than the estimated $6 million rounding hit per year caused by the penny’s retirement.

A penny for your trivia

The penny may be vanishing, but its history is full of fun facts.

President Lincoln was not always on the penny. Honest Abe only became the star attraction in 1909, in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Lady Liberty was the first to appear on the penny, back in 1793.

Newer pennies have little copper: Pennies minted after 1982 are made of copper-plated zinc, which consists of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper.

You can clean them: Vinegar, vegetable oil and water can help wash away decades of soot and grime off those pennies. But «don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t» even think about it if you want to hunt for any collectables in your penny stash — it could significantly damage their worth, says one coin shop owner.

Only Lincoln faces right: Our 13th president is the only person depicted on coins who is facing to the right. Everyone else faces left. Pull out some change and check for yourself.

50-50 coin toss? Try 80-20: Stanford math professor and former magician Persi Diaconis says that a penny will land tails up 80% of the time because the side with Lincoln’s head weighs significantly more than the tails side.

What D, S and P mean: Lettering on the front of the penny indicates where it was minted: D for Denver, S for San Francisco and P for Philadelphia. But you’ll only see P on pennies minted in 2017, which was done to celebrate the US Mint’s 225th anniversary. In all other years, pennies minted in Philly didn’t have the P.

Five special pennies: The final five pennies ever minted feature a special omega symbol, chosen because omega is the final letter in the Greek alphabet. You’re unlikely to ever see one in real life. Those five pennies will not enter circulation, according to the Treasury Department. Instead, the government plans to auction them off. Details about the auction aren’t yet available.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for March 18, #1011

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 18 #1011.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is pretty tricky, but musicians might find the blue group easy. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Time between two things, maybe.

Green group hint: That smarts!

Blue group hint: Rockers know these well.

Purple group hint: You might write one out to pay a bill.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Interval.

Green group: React to a stubbed toe.

Blue group: Guitar effects pedals.

Purple group: ____ check.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is interval. The four answers are patch, period, spell and stretch.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is react to a stubbed toe. The four answers are curse, hop, wince and yell.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is guitar effects pedals. The four answers are delay, reverb, wah and whammy.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ check. The four answers are blank, coat, rain and reality.

Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included «things you can set,» such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included «one in a dozen,» such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included «streets on screen,» such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included «power ___» such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included «things that can run,» such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Technologies

My Kid Wanted Video Games. I Was Against It. This Console Gave Us Both the Win

The movement-based Nex Playground might be the antidote to parental screen time guilt.

When our 8-year-old started asking for video games, I knew we were about to engage in an uphill battle. Anytime we’ve been to friends’ houses with gaming consoles, he goes full zombie mode, then has an epic meltdown once the sensory overload wears off. And since he inevitably ropes his 6-year-old brother in, we’re essentially sealing both their fates.

So when our neighbors started raving about a movement-based gaming console called Nex Playground, my first instinct was to shut it down. The words «gaming console» alone were enough to put me in a mental block. Add in my own memories of Wii tennis sessions where I nearly took out the ceiling fan, and I was firmly in the «no» camp.

But after doing a little more research, I was intrigued enough to try it out.

Screen time isn’t something I take lightly. With three kids ages 2 to 8, my husband and I have always been intentional about how and what they watch. They don’t have their own tablets, and most of their screen time happens on our family TV, which means whatever the oldest is exposed to quickly trickles down to our toddler. So anything we bring into the house has to work for all of them. Tall order, I know, but the Nex Playground gets surprisingly close.

Getting started is easy

The console itself is refreshingly simple. It’s a small cube, slightly larger than a Rubik’s cube, with a circular camera and motion sensor, a light indicator and two ports for power, and an HDMI connection to the TV. There’s no controller beyond a basic remote for navigating menus. For most games, your body is the controller.

Setup is quick. Plug it in, connect it to your TV, and you’re ready to go. It doesn’t store video or upload footage to the cloud, which was an immediate plus. It also comes with a magnetic privacy cover that you can put on the lens when it’s not in use.

At $250, it’s not cheap, but it’s less than some of the popular gaming consoles for this age range, like the Nintendo Switch 2. That gets you a five-game starter pack: Fruit Ninja, Go Keeper (soccer), Starri (think Guitar Hero for your whole body), Party Fowl (an AR emoji frenzy) and Whack-a-Mole. Additional games require a subscription: $89 a year or $49 for three months, which unlocks a library of 50-plus games and counting. New titles dropped even as I was writing this.

The library spans a surprisingly wide range. There are board game adaptations like Connect Four and Candy Land, character-driven games with Peppa Pig, Bluey and the Ninja Turtles, and sports like baseball and, yes, tennis — minus the ceiling fan hazard. There’s even parent-friendly content like Zumba workouts, which I may or may not have fully committed to on a rainy afternoon.

Even my toddler has gotten in on the action, mostly bouncing her way through Hungry Hungry Hippos when her brothers finally concede.

Gameplay is where it wins

The movements range from swinging your arms to keep a ball in motion, hopping or full-body launches that are far more aggressive than what the game actually requires. (I’m not about to tell the kids otherwise.) After a 45-minute session, my kids are tired and sometimes even drenched in sweat. The Nex Playground entertains and burns energy in one fell swoop.

The graphics also seem intentionally simple and arcade-like, which fits the minimalist play experience. There’s no POV storyline to get lost in, no leveling up into a new world at 9 p.m. on a school night. Some games keep score, which awakens my kids’ competitive streak, but the vibe is more collaborative and hasn’t been the catalyst for more fighting like other games. If anything, it’s done the opposite.

I still don’t love defaulting to a screen when my kids are bored, so we try to use it in moderation. In our house, piano practice is the only thing that unlocks weekend play time, and the fact that they’ll sit at the piano for a full hour tells you everything you need to know.

The verdict that matters most

But the real test: Does it hold up to an 8-year-old who was dead set on a Nintendo Switch?

Short answer: yes. At least for now. He’d still pick the Switch if you asked him, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

«The Playground is more tiring,» he told me, which only helped seal the deal for me. His current favorite is Homerun Hitters. «It’s basically a baseball game where you go against ranked global players. Me and my brother are really good at it.»

This from a kid whose primary hobby is annoying his younger brother. The fact that he said «me and my brother» as a collective was an unexpected bonus.

The Switch may still show up on the Christmas list this year. And realistically, I know I’m on borrowed time. As kids get older, «cool» becomes the currency, and a motion-based cube probably won’t hold up against an Xbox or a Switch once playdates turn into side-by-side gaming sessions.

The Nex Playground isn’t a replacement for those. It’s more of a detour; it gives them a taste of gaming without all the usual side effects. Even if I do eventually cave, I can still see it sticking around for the occasional family game night or as a rainy-day sibling diffuser.

In the meantime, I’ll relish this simpler version of gaming while I still can. He’s not exactly rushing me to return this review unit. More importantly, neither am I.

Technologies

Don’t Wait for New Emoji in iOS 26.4, Here’s How to Create Them on Your Own

If your iPhone has Apple Intelligence, you can create your own emoji now.

Apple will likely add new emoji to your iPhone when the company releases iOS 26.4. Those new emoji could include an orca, a distorted smiley face and more. According to Emojipedia, there are 3,953 emoji with more on the way. The current list of emoji include smileys, sports players, weather conditions and flags. But there’s no emoji for a dog wearing pajamas, a plate with burgers and fries and many other things. But if you have Genmoji on your iPhone you can create these emoji and many more.

Apple released iOS 18.2 in 2024 and the company introduced its own emoji generator, called Genmoji, to Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones at that time. The Unicode Standard, a universal character encoding standard, is responsible for creating new emoji, and approved emoji are added to all devices once a year. With Genmoji, you don’t have to wait for new emoji to appear on your iPhone each year. You can just create them as you need them.

Read on to learn how to use Genmoji on iPhone to create your own custom emoji. Just note that only iPhones with Apple Intelligence, like the iPhone 17 lineup, can use Genmoji at this time.

How to make custom emoji

1. Open Messages and go into a chat.
2. Tap the plus (+) button next to your text box.
3. Tap Genmoji.

You can then type a description of an emoji into the text box near the bottom of your screen and tap the check mark on your keyboard to enter that description into Genmoji. You can also tap different suggestions and themes that are right above the text box. And with iOS 26 or later, you can also combine and use emoji to create others rather than describing a new emoji or using suggestions.

Your iPhone will generate a series of new emoji for you to pick from according to your description, and you can swipe through these new emoji. When you find the one you want, tap Add in the top right corner of your screen and the new emoji will be available to use as an emoji, tapback or a sticker. Now you don’t have to wait for the Unicode Standard to propose, create and bring new emoji to devices.

For more iOS news, here’s what to know about iOS 26.3.1 and iOS 26.3. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet for other tips and tricks.