The New York Times is known primarily for Wordle and its crossword, but that doesn’t mean its other games won’t get some love. Case in point: Connections, the word game that tasks players with recognizing patterns among a group of 16 words or phrases. It’s known for being fun but sometimes obscenely difficult, and thanks to a new stats feature, you can now see how many times you’ve failed.
The newspaper announced Tuesday that Connections players will now be able to see their stats in the app, “including the number of puzzles completed, the number of ‘perfect’ puzzles, win rate, streaks and more.” It’s available on iOS, Android, the New York Times news app, and in the browser.
Players can check these out by clicking on the stats icon in the toolbar (it looks like a bar graph). This is similar to how it looks in other NYT Games apps; Wordle and Spelling Bee have similar features. You can also see your stats when you finish a game.
The New York Times has been putting a lot of work into its Games app, adding more games like Strands, along with more community features. Wordle got a bunch of updates in May, with the addition of the archives. It also launched WordleBot in 2022, a bot that will analyze your Wordle games and attempt to give you hints on how to improve. The app also got a redesign in March.
“These new features are all about deepening the delight of the game, keeping the challenge fresh, and fostering long-term engagement,” head of games Jonathan Knight said in a press release about Connections.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.