Technologies

Hot Wheels’ iPhone and PlayStation Mixed-Reality RC Racing Game Races In Your Home

The AR-enhanced RC car game, by the makers of Mario Kart Live, lets you shrink down and race around your living room. We played it.

A few years ago, Nintendo’s real-life-meets-video-game Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit turned my pandemic home into a theme park race course for my kids. Mario Kart Live’s RC cars need a Nintendo Switch to work, but now Mattel and Hot Wheels have made a whole new RC car mixed reality game experience made by Mario Kart Live’s developer, Velan. Hot Wheels Drift Rally, arriving March 14 for $130, is an RC car video game that races around your real world. And just like Mario Kart Live, it’s a lot of fun.

You need a Switch to play Mario Kart Live, but Hot Wheels Drift Rally works with iPhones, iPads and the PlayStation 4 and 5. It can cross-play between them, either locally or with others online.

I played with Drift Rally for about an hour in New York. The concept is similar to Mario Kart Live: A camera-enabled RC car streams its point of view to your TV or Apple device. From there, you drive the car and see the real world augmented with all sorts of video game special effects and a glowing race track.

The twist with Drift Rally is that the car itself, a sort of futuristic compact race car called the «Chameleon Car,» can transform in-game into 140 different Hot Wheels cars. It works weirdly well. Even though the physical car drives around your home the same way, in-game you see a different car appear, along with different driving physics and speeds.

Much like Mario Kart Live, the camera-equipped car works along with four included gates that form marker waypoints for your real-world race track. These get dropped down anywhere, and then the car drives through them and anywhere else to «paint» a track. Once that’s done, augmented reality effects sprout up all around, along with virtual race car opponents, to make a race experience that’s in your actual home.

The experience, zooming through your real world and floor-level obstacles as if you’ve been shrunken down to toy size, feels like a car-based version of drone racing. Drift Rally’s mix of TV via PlayStation or iPhone/iPad controls flexes the experience out around your home in a similar way that the Switch’s Mario Kart Live could work on-Switch or with the TV dock.

Drift Rally has some key improvements over Mario Kart Live: it can work at larger and smaller scales. By also connecting with Wi-Fi networks instead of just your iPhone, iPad or PlayStation, the cars can work across larger home spaces: I drove my car all through a four-room apartment while sitting on a sofa, watching my race car zip under beds and around kitchen cabinets. Besides the race modes, there are also stunt modes that could be set up without all the big race gates, meaning you could possibly play around in a smaller corner of your home more easily. Still, these cars are big; much bigger than your everyday Hot Wheels car. They’re roughly the size of the Mario Kart Live cars, and run for about 2 hours on a charge.

Drift Rally works with up to four car racers at once in the same room, or has split-screen multiplayer with one real car and everyone else driving virtual ones that can collide with the RC car on the race track. But, like Mario Kart Live, the cars aren’t meant to be used outdoors unless they’re on a flat driveway. (They’re not made to handle debris, dirt and water.)

At $130 — or $150 for a «deluxe» version that also comes with an actual collector’s Hot Wheels car — this game is more expensive than Mario Kart Live, which cost $100 at launch. But if you don’t have a Nintendo Switch and want to try to shrink yourself down into a mixed-reality RC racing game, this looks like your best bet.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 24, #897

Today’s Connections puzzle is kind of tough. Here are hints, answers and help for Nov. 24, #897.

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 kind of tough. The purple category once again wants you to find hidden words inside other words. If you need help sorting the words into groups, you’re in the right place. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now 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: Like an air fryer.

Green group hint: In your vehicle.

Blue group hint: Take out your laptops, dump out your water.

Purple group hint: Like a rainbow.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Small kitchen appliances.

Green group: Features of a car’s center console.

Blue group: Seen while going through airport security.

Purple group: Ending in colors.

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 small kitchen appliances. The four answers are blender, microwave, rice cooker and toaster.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is features of a car’s center console. The four answers are air conditioner, cup holder, radio and shifter.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is seen while going through airport security. The four answers are bin, carry-on, metal detector and X-ray.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ending in colors. The four answers are infrared, marigold, stingray and ultraviolet.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

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

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Nov. 24, #427

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Nov. 24, No. 427.

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles.

Music lovers, today’s Connections: Sports Edition has a fun green category for you. You’ll recognize some familiar phrases in the grid, I think. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

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

Yellow group hint: Not long pants.

Green group hint: Sing out.

Blue group hint: Gridiron guys who share a name.

Purple group hint: Like a law.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Types of shorts.

Green group: Popular arena/stadium songs.

Blue group: Football Drews.

Purple group: ____ rule.

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

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is types of shorts. The four answers are basketball, bike, compression and gym.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is popular arena/stadium songs. The four answers are Eye of the Tiger, Jump Around, Sandstorm and Thunderstruck.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is football Drews. The four answers are Bledsoe, Brees, Lock and Pearson.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ rule. The four answers are infield fly, mercy, tuck and unwritten.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Monday, Nov. 24

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Nov. 24.

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? Two down might be my favorite clue, and answer, this puzzle has ever offered. Read on for all of 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.