Technologies

Nintendo Wants To Plant a Talking Flower in Your Home in March

The latest weird Nintendo toy is part companion, part alarm clock, part thermometer.

Nintendo’s music-infused Alarmo clock came out more than a year ago and there’s a new home companion from the always-unpredictable Nintendo this spring. This time it’s a chatty home flower buddy, arriving March 12.

Talking Flower was teased last year and full details have cropped up today on Nintendo Talking Flower, a talking re-creation of the helpful/annoying/charming flowers that popped up all over the place in the Super Mario Wonder game. It’s a little trumpet-headed potted flower that talks at you, not with you.

The flower doesn’t have a screen or a microphone. It just talks. Sometimes it just says things twice an hour, but it can also be sort of helpful: It can remind you of bedtimes, tell the time, indicate room temperature, or act like an alarm clock.

There’s only one button on Talking Flower, which either triggers more random comments or can silence the thing for a while by pressing and holding for two seconds. (Good news, parents.) But there’s also a «music mode» that summons the Mario Wonder music track from the game, and then pressing the button makes the flower say more things to the music.

It’s weird that the flower has a thermometer inside, but hey, that’s Nintendo — it doesn’t look like specific temperatures are noted, but it might say «it’s colder today!» Also weird is trying to understand how this flower relates to Alarmo, a purely bed-focused Nintendo home product. You could put the flower anywhere, for any purpose. It’s a collectible. And, most likely, get freaked out by it randomly talking out of nowhere.

And again, now that Nintendo’s an entertainment company as focused on theme parks and films as game consoles and games, something like a talking flower makes sense. Seasonal souvenirs are Nintendo’s bread and butter, but we don’t know the price for this one yet. It’ll be available to order on Nintendo’s site today, arriving March 12.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Jan. 23 #691

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Jan. 23, No. 691.

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 might be the toughest of the week. Some of the answers are hard to guess and challenging 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: None the wiser.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: I believe you!

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:

RUDE, VINE, VINES, SCAN, SCAR, SCARE, LOST, LOSS, LESS, LESSER, BILL, BILE, GULL, RUED

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:

NAIVE, CALLOW, ARTLESS, GULLIBLE, CREDULOUS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is BORNYESTERDAY. To find it, start with the B that’s three letters to the right on the bottom row, and wind up and then down.

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Jan. 23, #487

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Jan. 23, No. 487.

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.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition reminds players that people’s names can look like regular words. Also, did you spot the SpongeBob SquarePants reference when the grid showed both SANDY and CHEEKS? 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: What’s your role?

Green group hint: Where teams shoot hoops.

Blue group hint: Iconic baseball players.

Purple group hint: Philadelphia.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Members of a staff.

Green group: Words used in NBA venue names.

Blue group: Hall of Fame pitchers, familiarly.

Purple group: 76ers head coaches.

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 members of a staff. The four answers are coach, manager, scout and trainer.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is words used in NBA venue names. The four answers are arena, dome, forum and garden.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Hall of Fame pitchers, familiarly. The four answers are Catfish, Rollie, Sandy and Satchel.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is 76ers head coaches. The four answers are Brown, Cheeks, Nurse and Rivers.

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

Technologies

Netflix Goes Vertical: More Phone-First Shows Coming in 2026

The streamer will add vertical video podcast clips and unveil a new mobile experience this year.

More vertical video features are coming to Netflix. Co-CEO Greg Peters revealed plans to expand the streamer’s mobile vertical video feed during Tuesday’s earnings call.

Testing is already underway to expand the mobile experience, which currently features vertical clips of Netflix TV shows and movies. New vertical video content, including snippets from video podcasts, will be available on Netflix this year.

«You can imagine us bringing more clips based on new content types, like video podcasts, which Ted [Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO] mentioned that we’re adding to the general service,» Peters said. «We’ll bring the sort of appropriate components of that into that vertical video feed.»

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Netflix’s move to expand its vertical video offerings comes after Sarandos acknowledged during the earnings call that social media apps like Instagram are now seen as competitors.

«TV is not what we grew up on. TV is now just about everything,» Sarandos said. «The Oscars and the NFL are on YouTube. Networks are simulcasting the Super Bowl on linear TV and streaming. Amazon owns MGM, Apple is competing for Emmys and Oscars, and Instagram is coming next.»

Competing with the likes of Instagram and TikTok means evolving the content the platform offers. And if it wants to attract Gen Z viewers, leaning into bite-sized vertical clips of live programming like WWE Raw, competition series Star Search and significant moments from Netflix hits like Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters is a good place to start.

«Vertical» is the hot buzzword in Hollywood right now. New production studios are dedicated to the mobile-first content, and with the massive popularity of vertical micro-dramas — which Variety calls «a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon» — more streamers will likely follow suit in the near future.

Peters also revealed Netflix’s plan to overhaul its mobile interface to «better serve the expansion of our business over the decade to come.»

«We’re going to roll this out later in 2026, and just like our TV UI, it then becomes a starting point, it becomes a platform for us to continue to iterate, test, evolve and improve our offering,» he said.