Technologies

I Saw the Sequel to The Witness, and Its World-Merging Puzzles Look Masterful

Order of the Sinking Star serves players plenty of brainteasers, while a background story grapples with what it means to be happy.

Jonathan Blow, creator of the 2008 platforming game Braid and the 2016 critically acclaimed puzzle title The Witness, has revealed his third game: Order of the Sinking Star. Over a video chat ahead of The Game Awards 2025, where the game was announced, Blow showed me his next clockwork world.

The new title from Blow’s personal studio Thekla, Inc. will be yet another puzzle game, but like his first two successes, Order of the Sinking Star has its own idiosyncratic rules and layers of depth. In it, players wander an overworld of islands that host myriad little puzzles to hop into. Each is a single screen of squares on a grid filled with doors with obstacles and enemies to navigate. Beat those to unlock islands with more brain-teasing challenges, and soon, you’ll even run into puzzles on the overworld.

Like Blow’s other games, Order of the Sinking Star is designed to reveal layers of meta-mechanics to the players as they dive deeper. Each of the four quadrants of the overworld map contains a different story, characters and basic mechanics — for instance, a trio of characters pushing, pulling and teleporting blocks around to reach the exit. But more heroes with different powers — even dragons — complicate the many puzzles as they go on.

And that’s just one of the four quadrants in the game, which have their own unique flavors of spatial challenge — all of which skyrockets in complexity in the places where they merge.

Order of the Sinking Star was partially inspired by the Japanese subgenre of Sokobon games, in which players carefully move boxes around a room (typically a warehouse) to avoid blocking themselves in a corner. The new game’s puzzles look to be thoughtful affairs, with simple levels giving way to more complex brainteasers and a background story trickling to the player in bits and pieces. Order of the Sinking Star will come out in 2026, and it looks promising.

Try making a game engine demo, end up with a whole game

After making The Witness, Blow was tired of developing in the C++ programming language, so he decided to make his own called Jai. But his team didn’t stop there and diverted to making their own specialized game engine. Order of the Sinking Star was intended to be a small proof of concept that would showcase the kinds of games possible to make with it. But Blow and his team couldn’t resist adding more and more puzzle dynamics.

«It was supposed to be a small game, but for some reason, it’s kind of stupid to build a game that’s about a combinatorial explosion and expect it to be small,» Blow said. «So for this game, that ended up meaning it’s really, really big. I probably will never do something this big again unless somehow I have a much bigger team.»

Order of the Sinking Star has a slight cartoonish look to it, at least from what was finished — I saw a good number of unfinished graphics, as Blow was eager to show off certain later game mechanics that hadn’t gotten finalized visuals. The complexity of the game won’t be in pushed pixels and lifelike graphics. But that’s likely for the best, as the simpler style makes the obstacles and map components as clear as possible to the players.

However, while players can proceed in any direction of the overworld, mechanics can get complicated pretty quickly. Blow showed me the first area, the northern quadrant, styled after a traditional swords-and-sorcery fantasy world. Players control three characters, each with different abilities: a warrior who can push objects, a thief who can’t help stealing and drags the last thing they touch behind them, and a wizard who teleports to swap places with the object they’re facing. Some puzzles have just one character, while more advanced ones will require players to swap between all three.

Players are dropped into the game without much preamble so they can get to puzzling, but text hints and audio logs (which Blow is an avowed fan of) will share the contextual story. The story consists of a queen who is using the heroes to help delve deeper into her land of puzzles in the northern section of the game.

Teleporters will enable players to hop around the different quadrants; if they get stuck, they can pop back to another area with different dynamics. The eastern quadrant, for instance, is all about using a magical mirror that beams a clone of the player’s character at a 90-degree angle to them, moving back and forth in tandem. In this land’s puzzles, players can swap from character to clone and back again to hop across islands.

But Blow and his team didn’t spend all this time just making four different puzzle biomes. On the overworld border where any of these quadrants collide, players will find levels that merge their mechanics. Following along the northeastern border, players will find maps with both fantasy hero and mirror puzzle mechanics mashed together.

Considering how long Blow’s team spent on the game and what little I saw, I only expect these complexities to grow and expand, surprising players with sophisticated alterations of these basic rules. That’s what made The Witness so compelling for me to explore deeper, as the game’s puzzles began to impact each other. Well, that and the philosophical underpinnings as the game’s setting and lore revealed its message.

The philosophy of Blow’s next game

After the storytelling depth layered into Blow’s previous blockbuster successes, it’s smart to expect similar meaning weaved into Order of the Sinking Star. Like Blow’s other games, the secrets are in the structure.

In Order of the Sinking Star’s case, the mystery lies in the overworld that players return to and explore between puzzles. What is it, who made it, and why? As the player drops into puzzles, the characters they control give a few lines of dialogue, which combine with audio logs to tell a bigger story: 500 years in the future, humanity exists in a postscarcity world.

«If you have no problems and everybody’s essentially infinitely rich, what is the point of life at that point?» Blow said. «Do people still interact in a normal way? Do they even talk to each other? How do they feel from day to day about themselves?»

Despite a true postscarcity society being far in the future, we’re also the richest society in the history of the world, Blow noted — and we already show plenty of rich society problems. He was quick to say that not everyone in the US feels wealthy right now. But even those with roofs over their heads who have jobs and live with someone in conditions where they’re generally taken care of are still challenged by questions a postscarcity civilization would have, which Blow quickly rattled off.

«How do I spend my days, and do I spend them being happy? What does being happy mean to me — is it a shallow form of being happy or a deep form? What are those two different things? Should one have judgment about that, and what kind of judgment?» Blow said.

The game’s story and art aren’t finished, so the delivery of these themes hasn’t been finalized. But Blow did confirm that Order of the Sinking Star has «way, way more story in it than either of my previous games — so I’m just really concerned with making sure it’s good.»

Making games that stretch past what’s out there — and what’s next for Blow

Though the 1993 classic first-person puzzle game Myst partially inspired (and was compared to) The Witness, there weren’t many games like it when it came out in 2016. Blow wasn’t sure folks would play the game, but plenty did. That supported his philosophy that you may have some idea what people would buy based on what’s out there, but nobody can tell how a game with an unknown design would land.

«That’s one interesting thing for a designer to do, and that’s what I try to do: make things that are a little bit outside the scope of what currently exists, and then hopefully other people appreciate those things as well,» Blow said.

Plenty has changed since his last game came out in 2016, including the noise of an increasing number of games jostling for attention upon release. Blow plays some of these, especially in his favored genre of puzzle games, which he still believes can be «really magical» when they have a mind-expanding idea. But too many other games are made by designers who don’t set their sights high, and their central idea is more of a tricky gimmick.

When I ask him about recent puzzle games he’s enjoyed, his tastes skew esoteric, like last year’s Shogun Showdown. Even a 20-minute demo for a game that hasn’t come out yet, Trifolium: The Adventures of Gary Pretzelneck, comes to Blow’s mind ahead of other popular puzzle games like this year’s The Blue Prince.

Yet he notes that The Blue Prince proves his point that games defying player tastes can make them desire the unexpected.

«If you asked people in January 2025, ‘What game do you most want to play this year,’ none of them would have described Blue Prince probably because they didn’t know that they wanted to play that, right?» Blow said.

Developing the game engine was a lengthy process that Blow and his team hope will translate to less time to develop their next game. He’s already got an idea of what he wants to do. Though it’s one of several potential game ideas he and his team could dig into, he already prototyped it privately — back before The Witness even came out.

«It’s not a puzzle game; I’ll drop a hint about that,» Blow said. «I’m looking forward to working on a nonpuzzle game.»

We’ll have to see whether Blow can resist avoiding the clockwork mechanics that have made his games irresistible to puzzle brains.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5, #970

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 5 #970.

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. 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: Star-spangled signs.

Green group hint: Smash into.

Blue group hint: Not green or red.

Purple group hint: Same surname.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Cultural symbols of the US.

Green group: Collide with.

Blue group: Blue things.

Purple group: Lees of Hollywood.

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 cultural symbols of the US. The four answers are American flag, apple pie, bald eagle and baseball.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is collide with. The four answers are bump, butt, knock and ram.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is blue things. The four answers are jeans, lapis lazuli, ocean and sky.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Lees of Hollywood. The four answers are Ang, Bruce, Christopher and Spike.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5 #704

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 5, No. 704.

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

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, once you clue in on the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Quint-essential.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Not four, or six.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DAYS, GIVE, WOVE, DOVE, LOVE, DOGS, SCONE, STOLE, GEEK, LODE, SIEGE, SLEW, HENS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TOES, OCEANS, SENSES, VOWELS, BOROUGHS, WEEKDAYS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GIVEMEFIVE. To find it, start with the G that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

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

Technologies

The Motorola Signature Is the Moto Phone I’ve Wanted for Years

Motorola’s new phone is its best flagship yet and could be the Galaxy S26 Plus rival that Samsung didn’t see coming.

At CES 2026, among the AI humanoids, flashy concepts and next-gen foldables, was a Motorola phone that I didn’t expect to be a CES highlight. And no, I’m not talking about theMotorola Razr Fold. While it was the talk of the town (after all, it is the company’s first-ever book-style foldable), there’s a premium smartphone with top specs and a sophisticated design: the Motorola Signature.

Recent high-end Motorola phones have had good-looking hardware, but they don’t compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultras or Pixel 10s of the world. They fall short in one or more areas, including display, performance, cameras, software or battery. The Motorola Signature is the company’s first flagship phone that looks confident enough to take on heavyweights like the upcoming Galaxy S26 Plus and the current iPhone 17, without faltering on either hardware or software.

I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and this Motorola phone doesn’t have any major downsides, especially for the price. The biggest one could be availability: It won’t be coming to the US, but it is now available for purchase in India at an unbeatable price. It undercuts the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17 and the Pixel 10 by almost $150 or more (directly converted from INR).

With the ever-increasing prices of premium phones, the Motorola Signature is the flagship killer we’ve been waiting for. At about $660 (INR 59,999), it is hard to beat, and I can admit I’m finally excited about a Motorola phone that’s not a Razr.

Motorola Signature is lightweight, slim and rugged

The Motorola Signature has a 6.8-inch 1,264×2,780-pixel resolution AMOLED display with support for a 165Hz refresh rate. It is an LTPO panel, so it can be set to 1Hz for an always-on display (like the iPhone 17 series and Galaxy S25 Ultra), thereby saving battery life. Its resolution might not be as high as the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s, but it is a promising screen for gaming and content consumption.

I couldn’t find a game to test its 165Hz refresh rate, but watching YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and reading ebooks — both indoors and outdoors — was a pleasing experience. The screen remains legible in all lighting conditions.

Motorola’s new phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. While it’s not the highest-end chip available (that’d be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5), it packs plenty of power. I had no issues in day-to-day use, occasional multitasking or gaming. My only complaint was with the camera shutter in low light, but we’ll get to it in a bit.

The Motorola Signature ships with Android 16 with the company’s in-house Hello UI on top. It is a comparatively clean interface with plenty of customization options to fine-tune your experience. One of my favorite features, Moto gestures (twist to open the camera or make a double-chop motion to turn on and off the flashlight) is always handy in unexpected ways.

You get an AI Key on the left side of the phone to trigger Moto AI (uses Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot), but it can only be triggered once you create a Motorola account. You can configure the button to do other shortcuts, like double-press it to take notes and press and hold to trigger Moto AI. But in reality, I didn’t use any of these features in my daily life and would’ve preferred the ability to remap them to a shortcut. Google’s Gemini assistant is also available.

The Signature has a 5,200-mAh silicon-carbon battery and supports 90-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging. Should those speeds hold up, that battery might fill up quickly using either method. It lasted me an entire day on medium use, but on another day, I had to charge it twice when I pushed it with streaming, browsing, Google Maps navigation for 30 minutes and active camera usage. It doesn’t compete with OnePlus 15’s massive 7,300-mAh cell but does well to reduce battery anxiety.

All of this sounds more impressive when you take the Signature’s design into context: The flagship Qualcomm processor’s power, 5,000-mAh plus battery, big AMOLED screen and three 50-megapixel cameras housed in a slim and lightweight design. The new Motorola phone is 6.99mm thick and weighs just 186 grams. For context, the Galaxy S25 Plus, with a smaller battery, measures 7.3mm thick and weighs 190 grams, while most recent big phones weigh 200 grams or more.

I shifted from the iPhone 17 Pro Max and enjoyed using the Motorola Signature because it weighed less. But I didn’t expect it to be so light. The Signature feels good in my hand. I’m glad it doesn’t have sharp flat sides like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Plus, I love its linen-inspired finish on the back, which sets it apart from the competition. Like its Edge siblings, the Signature is rated IP68 and IP69 for dust and water resistance (meaning it can survive being submerged under a meter of water for 30 minutes and high-pressure water jets), so there’s no fear of dust and water damage.

Improving on the 2 weakest links

Most Motorola phones that I’ve used in recent years, including the $1,300 Razr Ultra have one or two downsides: software support and/or cameras.

The Signature marks a new beginning for the brand as it joins the ranks of Samsung and Google with seven years of Android OS software and security updates. This is on par with Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones and better than what OnePlus offers. I hope this new software update policy is implemented on more Motorola phones launching in 2026.

Secondly, the Motorola Signature (finally!) introduces an impressive camera system. On the back, you get three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with OIS, paired with a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x zoom lens and OIS, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. This is the first Motorola phone with cameras that I wouldn’t trade for another setup during my vacations.

Photos from the primary and telephoto cameras have better color accuracy than previous Moto shooters. Images have a slightly warmer tone and are saturated — not as much as the OnePlus 15, which delivers much more saturated tones. I prefer Signature’s look in most scenarios.

However, the ultrawide-angle camera retains fewer details, and OnePlus does better in that regard.

The telephoto lens struggles with edge detection in low-light portraits, but I loved using it for architecture shots and capturing scenery around me. It can deliver some stunning shots even in 6x. Mind you, it has 3x optical zoom, but I shot the above photo in 6x, and it has a nice bokeh, good details and an overall pleasing look.

Motorola Signature final thoughts

Overall, the Signature has solid cameras for the price and the best optics yet for a Motorola phone. But there’s one hindrance: The camera shutter in low light is slow to process images. For instance, I wanted to snap a few action shots during a badminton game, but I missed some great smashes because the camera wouldn’t allow me to capture images faster.

The Motorola Signature marks a solid flagship comeback for the brand. It has a big and bright display, a capable processor, a versatile camera setup and good battery life. This phone is hard to fault in its price segment.

The Signature is now available to purchase in India at a starting price of INR 59,999 (approximately $660) for the 256GB variant. It will go on sale in Europe for €999 (approximately $1,170) with 512GB storage in the base version. Motorola has plans to launch its new flagship phone in more countries across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. However, the Motorola Signature won’t be coming to the US.