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You can get a Babbel Lifetime Subscription on sale for $149.97, though prices can change at any time. 

The Best TV Series to Stream This Week

If you're looking for a new show to watch this week, the vast landscape of streaming networks will provide plenty of them. The two of the most interesting new shows on streaming this week originated outside the United States: German dark comedy Where's Wanda? and creepy Japanese anime series Uzumaki. I don't know what this says, if anything, about the state of the U.S. entertainment industry, but I do know that you should give these shows a watch.

Where's Wanda?

This dark comedy series was imported from Germany. Where's Wanda? tells the story of Dedo and Carlotta Klatt, whose 17 year-old daughter disappears mysteriously. The local police are no help, so Dedo and Carlotta launch their own investigation by hiding high tech listening devices in their neighbor's homes. The couple's suburban surveillance reveals a hidden world where none of the neighbors are what they appear to be.

Where to stream: Apple TV+

The Legend of Vox Machina, season 3

The first and second seasons of animated series The Legend of Vox Machina earned perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores for their epic adventures and hilarious comedy, and season 3 aims to bring fans more of the same. Based on a D&D campaign from YouTube series Critical Role, this rowdy adventure show is the perfect treat for fans of comedy, adventure, and role-playing games, and I'm pretty sure that covers everyone.

Where to stream: Prime

Uzumaki

This animated horror series is based on the 1998 manga by Junji Ito. It tells the story of a town that is haunted by spirals. People being menaced by a shape didn't fully work in the 2000 live-action movie, where it comes off as a bit silly, but when you animate Ito's story with stark, evocative black and white drawings and present it over four episodes, it's not funny at all. Instead, Uzumaki is odd and haunting in a way that's hard to describe, but will have you wondering about all the spirals that surround you all the time.

Where to stream: Max

Social Studies

This docuseries follows diverse groups of teenagers from different high schools in Los Angeles, digging into a school year of their lives. The subjects have opened their phones as well as their lives, and Social Studies takes a look at the digital habits that are shaping the first generation of online natives as they grapple with beauty standards, sexuality, the future, and more.

Where to stream: Hulu

Unsolved Mysteries, Volume 5

We're on the fifth mini-season of Netflix's revamped version of this series about real-life conundrums, and the mysteries show no signs of stopping. This set of four episodes leans heavier on UFOs and the paranormal than previous volumes of Unsolved Mysteries—there's a Roswell episode, a cattle mutilation episode, and a psychic episode—so if you're into mysteries that are crimes instead of mysteries that are bullshit, this might not be the season for you.

Where to stream: Netflix

Last week's picks

Nobody Wants This

In this Netflix comedy series, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody star as Joanne and Noah, a pair of opposites: He’s a traditional rabbi used to playing it safe; she’s a brutally honest, in-your-face agnostic. Will these two fall in love despite the differences in their backgrounds and worldviews? I’d put my money on “yes,” because that’s what Nobody Wants This is about. 

Where to stream: Netflix

Penelope 

This young-adult series was created by Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn, and earned raves when the pilot aired at Sundance. It tells the story of Penelope, played by Megan Stott, an alienated 16-year-old whose yearning for the wilderness leads her to leave everything behind and trek into the unexplored wilderness to make a different kind of life for herself. 

Where to stream: Netflix

Brilliant Minds

In Brilliant Minds, Zachary Quinto plays Dr. Oliver Wolf, a talented neurologist who suffers from face blindness. Not being able to tell one person from another may seem like a drawback for a medical professional, but it gives Wolf unique insight into his patients' problems. He'll need all the help he can get at Bronx hospital, where he'll face some of the most puzzling psychological cases.

Where to stream: Peacock

Grotesquerie

Horror fans: Hulu sees you. Grotesquerie could be the full-tilt horror show you've been waiting for. When a series of gruesome crimes rocks a small town, local detective Lois Tryon starts to suspect that she's the real target. With no leads to go on, Tryon turns to Sister Megan, a nun with a special insight into the supernatural, and the unlikely pair are led into a maelstrom of evil where they uncover sinister secrets.

Where to stream: Hulu

There’s Now an NYT Connections Game for Sports

Traditionally, word games (like crosswords) and sports coverage have occupied entirely different pages and sections of the newspaper. But the New York Times is now combining both concepts with a sports-themed version of their Connections game, called simply Connections: Sports Edition.

(Beware: below are some spoilery descriptions of the October 4 edition of the puzzle.) 

The rules are the same as for the regular Connections game (speaking of which, you can read our daily hints for Connections here). There are 16 words or phrases on the board, forming four groups of four. While some words could conceivably belong to more than one group, there is only one way each day to divvy them up as the game designer envisioned. 

I am good at regular Connections, but useless when it comes to sports trivia. How sports-y is this game going to be? Well, I lost today’s game and expect to lose tomorrow, which is arguably sportslike in the sense that now I know how the Pirates must constantly feel.

Without giving away the whole thing, I’ll describe the types of categories that were in today’s game: 

• Team names that all share a theme (as in, the names are similar to each other; you don’t have to know anything about what sports they are from or how their players have been performing)

• Synonyms for a sports-related verb

• Four first names of players who all share the same last name

• Personalities on a sports-themed TV show

So, do you need to know exactly what’s been going on in the sports world? Not really. But should you have a passing familiarity with the names of teams, players, and commentators? Yes, for sure. 

Here are some more (actual!) categories from previous days’ puzzles: 

• Game with no stakes (EXHIBITION, FRIENDLY, SCRIMMAGE, WARMUP)

• Tennis shots (BACKHAND, DROP, SLICE, SMASH)

• Big Ten Nicknames (BADGERS, BOILERMAKERS, BUCKEYES, HOOSIERS)

• Former MLB Teams (BROWNS, EXPOS, PILOTS, SENATORS)

• Bar games (DARTS, FOOSBALL, JENGA, SHUFFLEBOARD)

• Basketball shots (DUNK, FLOATER, JUMPER, LAYUP)

• Golf equipment (CART, CLUB, GLOVE, TEE)

• A swimmer’s needs (CAP, GOGGLES, POOL, SUIT)

Connections: Sports Edition is in beta, meaning we can expect it to live on the NYT website while they tweak the details and gauge its popularity. If successful, it could move into the pantheon (and Games app) alongside Wordle, Strands, Connections, and Spelling Bee. If not, it could disappear forever—so play it while you can.

 Connections: Sports Edition
 Puzzle #11
 🟣🟣🔵🔵
 🟢🟢🟣🟢
 🟢🟢🟢🟢
 🟡🟡🟡🟡
 🔵🟣🔵🔵
 🔵🟣🟣🔵 

Seven Ways Technology Can Get You Arrested for Something You Didn't Do

Millions of people get arrested every year—about 7.36 million in 2022 alone. For most of us, that seems pretty abstract, because most of us aren’t criminals, and we assume that if we haven’t done anything wrong we have nothing to worry about.

But there are at least two things wrong with that assumption. First, almost everyone does something illegal in their lives that they view as a victimless crime or simply don’t realize is illegal, so your chances of being arrested someday may be higher than you suppose. And second, law enforcement and corporations are increasingly cutting out human beings and relying on technologies like automation, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence (often in combination), and those technologies are flawed—like, really flawed. And interacting with them can lead to false accusations and even arrests, even if you did absolutely nothing wrong. Here are seven ways you could be arrested today without even thinking about a crime.

Self-checkout

Self-checkout kiosks have been controversial, and many retailers are rethinking them, but they’re still pretty common. And if they make a mistake you could find yourself in a lot of trouble. Consider the example of Olympic athlete Meagan Pettipiece, who bought $176 worth of groceries at a self-checkout in a Walmart. The kiosk she used missed two items: Ham and asparagus. Pettipiece did scan the items, but the kiosk failed to register them—she did nothing wrong. But the police were called, and when they searched her bag they found marijuana and prescription medication, and she was arrested and charged with theft and possession of controlled substances.

The charges were later dropped, but not before Pettipiece’s life was ruined: She resigned from her coaching job and suffered damage to her reputation that will follow her forever. So next time you’re buying groceries at the self-checkout, make sure that every single thing gets scanned.

Facial recognition

Facial recognition technology is buggy and unreliable (often in very racist ways), but that doesn’t stop corporations and law enforcement agencies from using it, with unsurprisingly disastrous results. For example, Harvey Murphy Jr. was arrested when facial recognition software used by Houston retailers Macy’s and Sunglass Hut identified him as the perpetrator of an armed robbery. Murphy was in jail for two weeks, during which he was allegedly assaulted multiple times by other prisoners. But Murphy wasn’t just innocent: He wasn’t even in Texas when the robbery took place. This actually happens a lot, and it could happen to you if a facial recognition tool glitches and offers up your name for no reason whatsoever.

License plate cameras

Automated license plate readers are used by police departments to identify cars involved in crimes. If a car is, say, involved in a robbery or shooting, the readers can spot the plate number and alert police, who can then put officers on alert for the make, model, and license number of the car.

You can guess where this is going: License plate readers make mistakes. In North Carolina, for example, Jacqueline McNeill was arrested on suspicion of being involved in a shooting. The arrest was based on an automated license plate reader that mistakenly identified her car as the one being involved. She was held for several hours and interrogated, then released. She ultimately settled a lawsuit against the city for $60,000.

Incorrect databases

If you’ve ever had any run-ins with the law that were resolved—a dismissed case, a settled lawsuit—you might think your nightmare is over and you can get back to your life. But case management is increasingly automated these days—and the software that handles it is as buggy and unreliable as, well, all software. In California a few years ago a new case management system suddenly began treating old arrest warrants as current, and a spate of false arrests occurred because the police were given incorrect information. In other words, if a single piece of data in a complex database flips from a 1 to a 0, something that you handled years ago could result in a fresh arrest.

Flawed photo analysis

There’s really no such thing as online privacy—your files, photos, voicemails, and messages are all stored somewhere, and someone has access to them even if they’re supposedly protected. Companies like Google, which see enormous amounts of media pass through their servers, often utilize automatic scanning to identify and flag material that might be illegal—but when it gets it wrong, it leaves a ruined life or two in its wake.

In 2021, for example, a father took photos of his toddler and sent them to his physician for analysis. Google’s review algorithm flagged the photos and referred the man to law enforcement on suspicion of trading in child sexual abuse images. The police quickly cleared the man of any wrongdoing—but Google refused to reinstate his accounts. The lesson here is to remember that everything you post, store, email, or create using any internet-connected platform isn’t private, and could be easily misinterpreted by a soulless algorithm, leading to your arrest—and possibly worse.

Field drug test

Police often use field drug tests when they suspect someone is under the influence of controlled substances—about 773,000 out of 1.5 million drug arrests in this country are based on evidence gathered via a field test. But these tests are considered “presumptive” because the technology is not very reliable. The tests are cheap (they cost about $2 each) and disposable, and are so laughably terrible at their jobs that they frequently misidentify everything from cotton candy to vitamins as drugs.

Clarice Doku was arrested in 2018 after a field drug test reported the folic acid she was taking in hopes of getting pregnant as ecstasy. She and her husband spent two weeks in jail, she lost her job, he missed his citizenship ceremony, and the charges were, of course, eventually dismissed.

Technology makes our lives easier. Until it makes them much, much more difficult, especially when it leads to a false arrest based on nothing but some phantom data you can’t control.

Here’s When You Should Walk Away From Your Mortgage

All homeowners learn pretty quickly that buying the house is only the first step. Depending on the length of your mortgage, there are approximately 360 more steps to take, in the form of monthly mortgage payments. And that doesn’t include the other expensive steps—like paying for maintenance, property taxes, and insurance premiums. Suddenly you may realize you’re more house poor than you expected to be.

Of course, there’s house poor and then there’s house poverty—when you can’t afford to keep living there and paying the mortgage. Half the country has reported difficulty paying their mortgage or rent this year alone, and the standard advice remains the same: Contact your lender, look into government programs, and consider a short sale. But there’s one more option that might make sense under the right circumstances: Walk away and default on your mortgage.

Strategic default

A “strategic default” on your mortgage is simple: You stop making mortgage payments and redirect those funds to other areas of your life. It’s sometimes called “voluntary foreclosure” because you’re essentially putting aside your emotional attachment to the home, giving it back to the bank, and letting them try to sell it to recover the money owed on the loan.

A strategic mortgage default can be a good idea under a narrow set of circumstances. But before you decide to just pack a bag and make a run for it, take a moment to consider the very real, very negative downsides of walking away from a mortgage:

• Credit score hit. As you might imagine, your credit score is going to get hit hard by this move—to the tune of up to 160 points.

• Housing issues. Landlords may not rent to you if they run a credit check, and getting another mortgage will be tricky.

• Deficiency judgment. In some states if your foreclosed home doesn’t sell for the full debt, the bank can come after you for the balance, making a strategic default simply a delaying tactic.

Walking away from your mortgage has real consequences and shouldn’t be done lightly. That being said, it might be worth considering if you fall into the following scenario.

You’re underwater

Like, way underwater. A house is considered underwater when the amount owed on the mortgage is more than the current market value, and it’s considered “seriously” underwater if that gap is 25% or more. So if you owe $200,000 on a house and its market value is $150,000, congrats! You’re seriously underwater.

At that point it could take years to recover the value of the home—years during which you’d still be paying a mortgage, assuming you can afford to keep making the payments. And even if you hang on by your fingernails and keep up with the mortgage, you’ll probably never break even on the investment when you factor in all the other costs of home ownership. Loan modifications can be challenging when you’re that underwater, so chances are you’ll never get your equity back and a short sale won’t cover the amount owed. In that case, walking away instead of throwing good money after bad might make sense—especially if you can’t afford the monthly payments anyway.

Your credit is already bad

As noted above, a strategic default on your mortgage will do a number on your credit score for years to come. But if your credit score is already considered poor, the hit you take from a strategic default won’t make much difference in the short term.

One thing to consider, however, is recovery time. The relatively minor financial missteps that socked your credit score will fade away in a few months, but it can take about three years for your credit score to recover from a foreclosure, voluntary or otherwise. You’ll need to consider how a ruinous credit score will impact your life for the foreseeable future. But if your credit is already trashed, walking away from your mortgage will only make things slightly worse, and you can use the money you were putting into the mortgage to pay down other debt, build up your savings, or otherwise right your financial ship.

There are no deficiency judgments

Finally, make sure you live in a state that doesn’t allow deficiency judgments. For example, let’s say the house described above (where you owe $200,000 on the mortgage but the house is valued at $150,000) is in the state of Florida, which does allow for deficiency judgments. You walk away, and the bank eventually sells the house for $135,000, which leaves $65,000 unpaid on the loan. The bank obtains a deficiency judgment against you, and begins garnishing your wages. That means you tanked your credit just to pay your mortgage off in the slowest and most painful way possible.

If your house is underwater, your credit in shambles, and you live in a state without deficiency judgments, a strategic default on your mortgage can save you a lot of money and might be your best bet. Otherwise, it’s almost always going to be better to work out a modification with the bank or attempt a short sale on a home you can no longer afford.

Today’s Wordle Hints (and Answer) for Thursday, October 3, 2024

If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for October 3, 2024 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is medium difficult; I got it in four. Beware, there are spoilers below for October 3, Wordle #1,202! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Wordle game.

How to play Wordle

Wordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.

Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if they’re correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isn’t in the day’s secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)

Ready for the hints? Let’s go!

---

Does today’s Wordle have any unusual letters?

We’ll define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters’ phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it “Edwin Shirdloo,” like a name, and pretend he’s a friend of yours.)

There are three common letters from our mnemonic today! One is somewhat common, and one is uncommon.

Can you give me a hint for today’s Wordle?

You can haul kids in this.

Does today’s Wordle have any double or repeated letters?

There are no repeated letters today. 

How many vowels are in today’s Wordle?

There are two vowels.

What letter does today’s Wordle start with?

Today’s word starts with W. 

What letter does today’s Wordle end with?

Today’s word ends with N. 

What is the solution to today’s Wordle?

Ready? Today’s word is WAGON.

How I solved today’s Wordle

I started with RAISE and TOUCH, followed by BLOND to eliminate the most common letters. I guessed WAGON, which was one of only a few possibilities with A as the second letter.

Wordle 1,202 4/6

⬛🟩⬛⬛⬛
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

---

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle was medium difficult. The hint was "you'll find this on a beach” and the answer contained all common letters.

The answer to yesterday’s Wordle was SHELL.

A primer on Wordle basics

The idea of Wordle is to guess the day’s secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, you’ll see an empty grid of letters. It’s up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word. 

Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word: Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and it’s in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)

• Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)

• Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)

With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then it’s game over.

The best starter words for Wordle

What should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, that’s still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isn’t a single “best” starting word, but the New York Times’s Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:

• CRANE

• TRACE

• SLANT

• CRATE

• CARTE

Meanwhile, an MIT analysis found that you’ll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:

• SALET

• REAST

• TRACE

• CRATE

• SLATE

Other good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that it’s better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.

How to win at Wordle

We have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if you’re a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.

The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, don’t waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.

One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldn’t have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.

Wordle alternatives

If you can’t get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:

• Wheeldle, which lets you play one puzzle after another

• Dordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.

• Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.

• Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.

• Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.

• Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the day’s solution. You’re required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.

You Can Get $165 Free to Spend During Amazon October Prime Day

Amazon really wants to you to buy things during its Prime Big Deal Days. This year’s sale will take place October 8 and 9, and the mega-retailer is not only cutting prices (kind of) on thousands of products (whether you need them or not), it’s offering free money (in the form of credits that can only be spent on Amazon). You can grab $165 of Amazon’s money if you jump through the following digital hoops.

Get $15 for backing up pictures with Amazon Photos

If you're an Amazon Prime member, you get free, unlimited photo storage with your membership, and if you take advantage of this promotion, Amazon will pay you $15 in credits for backing up your pictures. Here's how:

• Download the Amazon Photo App. It’s available for iOS, Android, and desktop, but this offer only applies to the mobile version.

• Upload your photos. (Or photo; you only need to upload one.)

• Await your reward. A $15 credit should arrive in your email shortly.

This won’t work if you’ve used the app before, and the credit you receive has to be used by Prime Day. You need to hop on it quick, too: the offer is only open until midnight on October 3. The credits expires at midnight on the 9th, and it can only be used on an order of $30 or more.

Sign up for an Amazon Prime Visa card for $150

If you sign up for an Amazon Prime Visa credit card, and you're approved, you'll get an instant free $150 Amazon gift card.

If you shop at Amazon a lot, the card might prove a good deal, even without the free $150. It offers 5% discounts on Amazon purchases, Whole Foods purchases, and Chase travel, plus a 7% discount for anything you buy on Prime Days, as long as you choose no-rush shipping. There's no annual fee if you're a Prime member.

The APR is 19.99% to 28.74%, which is around the national average of just above 20%. The bad news: the rebate rate on non-Amazon purchases is 1%, so it's really best if you do a lot of Amazon shopping.

Discounted Prime membership for students and others

Amazon Prime membership gives you free shipping on many Amazon items and access to Prime Video’s vast selection of movies and TV shows for $14.99 and month or $139 per year (worth it for the selection of mid 1960s Beach Party movies alone.) But if you’re an eligible student or receive EBT or other government benefits, Prime will only cost you $7.49 or $6.99 per month respectively. Definitely take advantage if you qualify.

You can already shop for early Prime Day deals

Some items are already marked down on Amazon in advance of Prime Big Deal Days, like this 55-Inch Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED. Lifehacker will be covering everything related to Prime Big Deal Days, so keep watch and stay alert.