Technologies

Let’s Not Forget About Wordle

The feelings we had earlier this year are needed more than ever.

About 100 years ago — or, that’s how long it feels — we were all together, playing Wordle. Well, we weren’t technically together. We were in sunny places, snowy places, other countries, commuting, staying at home. We were together, though. In a sense. And we weren’t screaming.

Little score grids popping up everywhere, instead of historical face filters or randomly generated AI art, or snippets of chatbot-generated text. These grids, these scores. Wordle swept through an Omicron winter where flights were canceled, trips postponed, returns to work delayed again. It was like bread-baking 2.0. Just another viral pandemic moment.

The game was acquired by The New York Times in early February, and I was ready to say goodbye to a moment I always suspected would end sometime. And it did: Scores stopped being shared. Players dwindled. I eventually stopped playing regularly sometime in the late spring, I don’t know when.

I want to go back to that moment. I remember what was going on: I was depressed. I felt disconnected from friends, from family, from anyone. I put random things on Facebook so I could feel like I did something, for just a few moments, to reach out. For a while, it was random food shots of me putting chili crisp in oatmeal. Then it was Wordle scores. I found a little community of old friends who wrote back and shared theirs. We nodded our virtual heads. We connected, just a bit.

These moments may seem frivolous. They’re not. At the end of 2022, where are we? Twitter has been acquired, gutted, and is slowly being transformed. Migrations away from Twitter (or Facebook) to constellations of new platforms, strange new worlds, places like Mastodon or Hive or Post. Social media, at the end of 2022, feels like it’s either on its last legs or struggling to be reborn as something strange, new and — yes, to me — alien.

With everything that 2022 ended up becoming, something like Wordle feels like a ridiculous little footnote, utterly unimportant, perhaps completely pointless. I still think of it as a little spark of connection. A hope for making people feel like they can reach out to each other without hating or escalating or destroying. The whole original idea of social media that seemed so appealing, maybe, a long time ago, was that it could bring familiar faces together and, for just a few moments, create a sensation of connection. My games of Wordle, along with a few special trips into VR with friends, and a few lingering Zooms, were some of the few moments that did that. For all we’re rushing out to see people and connect again in the real world, we forget the moments when connecting virtually actually worked.

I read an article in The Atlantic the other day that spoke deeply to me, about how we’re haunted by the ghosts of 2019. I am. Life in 2022, trying to go back to «normal,» has felt uncanny. I commute now. I’ve gone on flights. I’ve gone to the UK again. None of it felt normal. Some of it felt familiar. Echoes of the old, overlaps of the new.

Slowly but surely, we’re returning to a strange version of the world we once knew — or trying to. How do I move forward here?

I hope, in our rush to return to «normal,» we stay connected to the strange rituals that brought us together in our lowest moments. It doesn’t have to be Wordle — that’s just a word game gone viral. But as we reinvent how we communicate online — via social media or metaverses — I’ll take any help I can get. Show me how we could reconnect and not feel alienated. Wordle was lightning in a bottle, and even though I’ve said goodbye to what it was in that moment, I’ll always be searching for that feeling again.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, April 7

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 7.

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

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Informative commercial, for short
Answer: PSA

4A clue: Something you trace to draw a Thanksgiving turkey
Answer: HAND

5A clue: ___ Johnson, former Prime Minister of the U.K.
Answer: BORIS

6A clue: Opposite of include
Answer: OMIT

7A clue: Crosses (out)
Answer: XES

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: City with the Notre-Dame Cathedral
Answer: PARIS

2D clue: Bad mood
Answer: SNIT

3D clue: About eight minutes of the average half-hour sitcom
Answer: ADS

4D clue: Remote worker’s office, perhaps
Answer: HOME

5D clue: Word that can follow each group of circled letters (and hints at its shape)
Answer: BOX

Technologies

NASA’s Artemis II Breaks Record With Trip Around The Moon

Technologies

In Honor of the Artemis II Mission, Explore the Moon in Fortnite Now

You might not be able to see the moon the way the Artemis II team is, but there’s an educational Fortnite simulation that will get you onto the celestial body’s surface.

You may not be able to explore the vast majesty of space in the same way that the four-person crew of the Artemis II is, but you can still get an up-close-and-personal view of the moon… in Fortnite, at least.

While you may not be able to slingshot around Earth’s own lunar body, space enthusiasts can see a little bit of what the Artemis II crew is seeing by spending time on the Lunar Horizons Fortnite map right now. The map is a creative collaboration between Fortnite’s creator, Epic Games, and the European Space Agency. Lunar Horizons was released in 2024 after extensive testing and play from ESA trainee astronauts.

If you’re looking to learn more about our own orbiting body, the Lunar Horizons map is an educational simulation of the surface of the moon’s South Pole.

It blends game mechanics with learning, as players get to build up their own sterile lunar habitat bases, interact with ESA astronauts and roll around with robotic rovers as they discover informative plaques that contain information about the moon and international space agencies. There are still dangers to navigate, too — a solar storm may strike when you least expect it.

If you’re interested in exploring the moon, we’ve got all the information you need to join in on the Fortnite fun below. And if you’re looking for a more serious livestream during this momentous human achievement, tune into NASA’s feed here.

How to join the Moon Fortnite island while you follow the Artemis II mission

The Lunar Horizons Fortnite map is a great educational simulation that shares details about ESA’s work and catalogs information about humanity’s lunar research.

These three simple steps will get you up and running (or more accurately, taking slow leaps and bounds) on the surface of the Lunar Horizons Fortnite map:

Download Fortnite

If you haven’t played Fortnite before, but you want to check out this limited-time event, you’ll have to download the game. If you’re on PC, you can download Fortnite for free from the Epic Games Store. Console players can navigate the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store or Nintendo eShop in order to download Fortnite on their devices.

Navigate the in-game menus until you reach the Search button

Once you’re in the game, scroll down past the different official Fortnite game modes and the Discover tab until you find the Search button.

Input the Lunar Horizons island code

In the search bar, you can input a map’s name or its distinct search code in order to find it in the map directory. You can search for the Lunar Horizons map or input the code 3207-0960-6428 to explore this map in time.

Correction, 3:35 p.m. PT: This story initially was in error about the features available in the Lunar Horizons map. There is no Artemis II-specific mission in Fortnite. Rather, the Lunar Horizons map is an educational simulation of part of the moon’s surface.