Mashable

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.

There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.

An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.

If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint

Sky blue.

SEE ALSO: Apple’s new M3 MacBook Air is $300 off at Amazon. And yes, I’m tempted. Hurdle Word 1 answer

AZURE

Hurdle Word 2 hint

Insanely.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for August 4, 2025 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

MADLY

Hurdle Word 3 hint

A puppy.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for August 4 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for August 4, 2025 Hurdle Word 3 answer

WHELP

Hurdle Word 4 hint

A sticky, stretchy candy.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for August 4 Hurdle Word 4 answer

TAFFY

Final Hurdle hint

To vomit.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Games available on Mashable Hurdle Word 5 answer

RALPH

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

This content originally appeared on Mashable for a US audience and has been adapted for the UK audience.

If you're willing to spend the cash, a robot vacuum is a great investment. By which we mean an investment in putting your feet up and letting technology do the housework for you. We can't think of a better use of your hard-earned money, quite frankly.

Unless you're tech-savvy, choosing a robot vacuum cleaner to whizz around your home can be easier said that done. There are dozens of models out there, all offering variations on the same thing, but each with their own spec and features.

If the prospect of choosing a robo vac has got your head spinning, don't worry: We're here to help. We're looked around and done some research on your behalf, which means even more time to put your feet up. Here's a quick guide on robot vacuums — and our pick for the best models you can buy right now.

Are robot vacuums worth buying?

The crisp control of a regular, upright vacuum is its own particular pleasure. But if you're someone who finds cleaning stressful, a robot vacuum could cut a major chore off your to-do list. Whether robot vacuums are worth it or not comes with a caveat: It can't be just any robot vacuum. A cheap robovac that acts drunk — scattering dust rather than sucking, bumping into walls, getting stuck on rugs — defies the point. Robot vacuums are made to be convenient, so get one that makes life easier.

What are the most important robot vacuum features?

Here's a rundown of essential features to consider when buying a robot vacuum:

• App control — WiFi-enabled robot vacuums can be synced with a smartphone app to control scheduling and other features. If you're used to asking Alexa or Google to turn off the lights or tell you the weather, a model with voice integration will blend in nicely.

• Battery life — Larger spaces require more time to clean, which means you'll want a battery that lasts. Run times for the list below range between 115 and 240 minutes.

• Docking station — Many robot vacuums have a multipurpose docking station. The robovac will return to the dock automatically and self-empty its bin while also charging the battery. The docking station may double up as a bin that can hold debris.

• Floor types & mopping — Depending on the floors you have at home, look out for models that have features for both carpet and hard floors. This may include the ability to climb up on higher pile rugs. There are also hybrid models that mop hard floors. 

• Low-profile cleaning — No one should have to be scared about what's accumulated under their sofa over the past year. A robot vacuum measuring three inches or less in height should be able to scoot under most low-hanging sofas and beds.

• Navigation & mapping — Every robot vacuum is equipped with sensors and drop detection. But if your home has lots of rooms, lots of turns, or lots of close-together furniture, you'll have fewer navigation issues with an advanced model that uses intelligent mapping to remember exactly how your home is laid out.

• Pet hair cleaning — Pet owners should consider a model with an anti-tangling roller brush, which will collect cat and dog hair while also preventing the robot vacuum from clogging up.

• Suction power — A vacuum is the one purchase that you hope really, well, sucks. Suction power is typically measured in Pascals (Pa), usually ranging from 2,500-10,000 Pa. Stronger suction is needed to pick up heavier pieces of debris and to pull pet hair out of rugs.

Keep these features in mind when shopping around for a robot vacuum.

What is the best robot vacuum?

It's not a one-size-fits-all situation. "Best" to someone with four dogs and lots of carpeted rooms may not mean "best" to someone with a huge house filled with wooden floors. To help make sense of the options, we've highlighted a broad range.

These are the best robot vacuums in 2025.

A quirk of nature that helps magnify extremely distant cosmic objects allowed a space telescope to see a star that existed when the universe was only 900 million years old. 

NASA's Hubble observatory made the discovery in 2022, making it the farthest and earliest star ever seen. Astronomers named it Earendel, meaning "morning star" in Old English. 

A year later, scientists followed up with the James Webb Space Telescope because it has a larger mirror and collects light at longer infrared wavelengths. At that point, scientists thought they may have spotted a companion star, something they were surprised was technically possible, even with Webb's unprecedented power. 

Now, a new study suggests that the astonishingly distant starlight of Earendel may be coming from more than just a single star or close pair. The paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, analyzes the previous Webb telescope data with computer models and finds a compelling case that Earendel may, in fact, be a star cluster, made up of a collection of stars. 

"My secret hope is that it is an individual star," Massimo Pascale, who led the research at UC Berkeley, told Mashable. 

SEE ALSO: How AI helped astronomers uncover one truly weird supernova

Scientists are eager to find and research stars as old as Earendel because such relics may solve mysteries of the ancient universe, thought to be 13.8 billion years old.

Hubble detected Earendel through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing — when a galaxy cluster in the foreground of a telescope's view magnifies and bends light beyond it. NASA often uses the analogy of a bowling ball placed on a trampoline to illustrate this point, with the ball representing a massive celestial object and the trampoline being the fabric of spacetime. Light that would otherwise travel straight curves gets distorted as it passes through that warped spacetime. It's like adding a more powerful lens to a telescope.

A massive galaxy cluster's magnification allowed astronomers to see Earendel with the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA / ESA / Brian Welch / Dan Coe / Alyssa Pagan

But gravitational lensing also has the potential to replicate or stretch objects, the way a funhouse mirror can create multiple irregular copies of images.

Because galaxy cluster WHL0137-08 is serving as a colossal magnifying glass in the sky, the light of Earendel's incredibly distant galaxy, the Sunrise Arc, popped into Hubble's view. Scientists could see it as it was 12.9 billion years ago. But today, because the universe has also stretched out through cosmic expansion, the Sunrise Arc is estimated to be 28 billion light-years away from Earth.

Astronomers have a lot of experience identifying the effects of gravitational lensing, but that wasn't always the case. In 1987, an enormous blue arc thought to be hundreds of trillions of miles long was at first considered one of the largest things ever detected in the cosmos. Later that year, scientists figured out they were looking at an optical illusion, a distortion caused by a galaxy cluster. The New York Times published a story about the "bizarre" implication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, titled "Vast Cosmic Object Downgraded to a Mirage."

For Earendel, some astronomers have continued to wonder whether it is indeed a star. Pascale, now an Einstein Fellow at UCLA, and collaborators decided to reassess its size, which may have been low-balled since estimates didn't account for mini halos of dark matter, a mysterious, yet abundant substance that doesn't shine or interact with light. Such clumps of dark matter could be influencing the magnification. With these effects considered, Earendel's size could be consistent with a star cluster. 

The researchers compared Earendel to a widely acknowledged star cluster in the same galaxy, known as 1b. What they found was that Earendel and the 1b cluster have similar features: They're both already between 30 and 150 million years old in Webb's snapshot, they lack heavy elements made by "newer" stars, and they resemble nearby ancient star clusters. 

While 1b fit extremely well in star cluster models, so did Earendel, according to the study.

"In order for Earendel to be an individual star, or maybe a binary of two stars very close to each other, the chance alignment of Earendel with the foreground galaxy cluster that's causing the gravitational-lensing effect would have to be an incredible stroke of luck," Pascale told Mashable. "If it is a star cluster, that chance alignment — it doesn't have to be quite as perfect."

Though the new paper doesn't speculate on how many stars could be among such a cluster, Pascale says its mass might be equal to that of hundreds of thousands of suns — or more. 

One possible way to answer the question of whether Earendel is a lone star is to watch for flickers. Through multiple observations, scientists might be able to catch the light source suddenly and briefly getting brighter. A star cluster wouldn't show such fluctuations because all of the other stars' light would wash it out. 

Though securing the telescope time to conduct the research would be expensive, Pascale said it might be a worthwhile endeavor for the scientific community to explore.

So far, colleagues have seemed open to considering a star cluster as an explanation for Earendel, but Pascale emphasizes that the paper doesn't definitively prove that it is: The previous teams that made the discovery make a compelling case, too. He hopes the new study merely adds to the discourse.

"Maybe everybody keeps what their secret thoughts are about it a little bit more private," he said, "but most people are pretty happy to say, 'Yeah, a star cluster seems like an option.'"

TL;DR: For a limited time, Koofr’s lifetime cloud storage deal is only A$305 (reg. A$1,238).

Opens in a new window Credit: Koofr Koofr Cloud Storage: Lifetime Subscription (1TB) AU$305
AU$1,238 Save AU$933 Get Deal

You know that quiet dread when the monthly cloud storage fee hits your card — again? It’s not huge, but it adds up. And for what? A few PDFs, some photos you forgot to organize, and maybe that video project you swear you’ll finish someday. 

If you're tired of renting space in the digital void, here’s your chance to escape. Rather than paying each month, Koofr will give you 1TB of cloud storage for a one-time fee of A$305 (reg. A$1,238).

Here’s why we love this deal

Koofr takes your privacy seriously with top-notch encryption for your files, both when they're being transferred and while they're stored. They also don’t track your activity, so you can rest easy knowing your data is secure and private.

What really stands out about Koofr’s cloud storage is how flexible and user-friendly it is. Whether you're on your smartphone, desktop, or using WebDAV, you can easily access and manage your files from anywhere. The interface is straightforward, so even if you're new to cloud storage, you’ll find it easy to use.

Plus, if you’re already using other cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon, or OneDrive, Koofr integrates smoothly, letting you handle everything from one place.

And for keeping your digital space in order, Koofr has some neat features. The duplicate file finder helps you eliminate unnecessary repeats, while advanced renaming options let you customize file links. This way, you can keep your files organized and your digital space clutter-free.

Keep your files safe and sound with a Koofr 1TB Cloud Storage lifetime subscription for A$305 while it's available. No coupon is required to get this discounted price.

StackSocial prices subject to change.