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TikTok has a new suggestion for anyone worried that endless scrolling has turned their brain into mush: Pick up a book. Or a crossword puzzle. Or a Sudoku. Better yet, stack them all together.

It's called "brain stacking," and the idea is pretty simple. Instead of reaching for your phone whenever you have a spare moment, you keep a collection of books, puzzles, journals, and other mentally stimulating activities within arm's reach. Think of it as a little library of things to do when you're bored that don't involve staring at another screen.

And in an era when "brain rot" has become part of our everyday vocabulary, it's not hard to understand the appeal.

What is brain stacking?

Brain stacking is exactly what it sounds like: assembling a stack of activities designed to engage your brain. On TikTok and Instagram Reels, creators are showing off their collections of Sudoku books, crossword puzzles, novels, journals, and other analog activities, often as part of their morning or nighttime routines.

The goal isn't necessarily to become smarter overnight. It's to replace some of the time you'd otherwise spend doomscrolling or bloomscrolling with activities that require a little more concentration, creativity, or critical thinking.

In one TikTok, highlighted by Essence's Girls United, creator @shykikii shares her nighttime brain-stacking routine, which includes journaling, Sudoku, and reading before bed. She credits fellow creator and "brain stack queen" @mandyrulez for the inspiration and for seemingly coining the term.

Some creators are also incorporating timed brain stacks into their mornings, using activities like Sudoku and writing exercises to kick-start their days. As CORQ reports, the trend is part of a larger wave of morning and nighttime "stacks" that package different habits into repeatable routines.

Essentially, it's a way to make spending time offline feel like an activity in itself. And, naturally, there's an aesthetic component to it, too. A thoughtfully assembled pile of books and puzzles looks pretty good sitting on a bedside table.

Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with analog activities?

Brain stacking might sound familiar to anyone who remembers the "analog bag" trend that took off on TikTok last year. The idea was to fill a tote bag with books, crossword puzzles, knitting supplies, journals, and other screen-free activities you could reach for instead of your phone. Creator Siece Campbell helped popularize the concept, inspiring others to assemble their own portable collections of analog entertainment.

Brain stacking takes a similar approach, only instead of carrying your hobbies around in a tote, you keep them stacked within reach at home to make reading, writing, and solving puzzles a regular part of your day. Both trends are rooted in the same desire to make doing literally anything other than scrolling feel a little easier.

Throughout 2026, creators have been embracing everything from physical media and film cameras to knitting, journaling, and other so-called "grandma hobbies." The common thread is a desire to spend less time on screens and more time on tangible activities.

It's also part of a growing cultural conversation about waning attention spans and our complicated relationships with our phones. Between endless notifications, algorithmic feeds, and the constant temptation — and growing compulsion — to scroll, finding ways to disconnect has become its own kind of online obsession.

Of course, there's something a little ironic about discovering your new screen-free hobby on TikTok, a contradiction exacerbated by the creators participating in the trend. And like so many lifestyle trends on the platform, brain stacking also comes with the temptation to buy a bunch of new things in the name of self-improvement, raising familiar questions about overconsumption.

But you don't actually need to purchase an aesthetically pleasing collection of puzzle books to participate. A book you've been meaning to finish, an old notebook, or a crossword from the newspaper works just as well.

If brain stacking encourages people to spend a little less time scrolling and a little more time engaging with the world beyond their phones, that's probably a good thing. Just don't spend three hours on TikTok researching the perfect brain stack.

A European spacecraft built to map galaxies has discovered a new comet serendipitously, proving it can do more than study dark matter and dark energy in the distant universe. 

The Euclid Space Telescope spotted the space snowball, dubbed C/2026 S1 (Euclid) between Sept. 16 and 24, after the renegade had smudged five image sets. 

The European Space Agency's mission, launched in 2023, takes long exposures of faraway galaxies, not high-speed photography of zippy objects in our own solar system. But moving-object software, developed by Mikko Pöntinen, a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, flagged an errant streak. Finding and removing stray signals is crucial for the mission to photograph about one-third of the entire sky in every direction around Earth.

"By predicting [the object's] position, I could identify it in other images," Pöntinen said in a statement. "Further inspection revealed that it had a fuzzy cloud around it, indicative of an active object like a comet that is shedding dust and gas."

The results show Euclid, a mission in partnership with NASA, can find new comets early, while they are still fairly far from the sun. That buys astronomers time to watch it activate and change as it approaches, as well as study what it's made of. Tracking a comet over time allows researchers to get a more accurate depiction of its orbit, which tells them how close it will come and how bright it might get. 

SEE ALSO: Mars without its makeup can look a little blue. Here's why.

Right now the comet is about 800 million miles from Earth. If you were to compare that distance to planets in the solar system, it would sit roughly between Jupiter and Saturn. 

But this comet is not in the flat plane where the planets orbit. Relative to the sun's position, it's actually overhead, looping up and over the solar system. One full orbit for this object would likely take thousands of years to complete, according to ESA. 

That's another reason why spotting C/2026 S1 (Euclid) was so fortuitous. The space telescope looks away from the strip of sky along the solar system's plane, where asteroids and comets are common. Dust in that field of view can cause glare that could otherwise spoil deep-sky images. The comet was found in the direction of the Draco constellation in the far northern sky.

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"Very few comets are expected to be discovered by Euclid so it was a happy coincidence that the combination of the comet's orbit and Euclid's scanning over those days captured the object in multiple images," said Bruno Altieri, who was part of the discovery team, in a statement. 

Comets are icy, dusty material left over from when the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. As of the writing of this story, there are over 4,000 known comets. When the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center confirmed the detection of C/2026 S1 (Euclid) on Oct. 8, it became one of 13 found so far this year. 

Comet C/2026 S1 (Euclid) looks like a streak in Euclid Space Telescope deep-sky images because it moves fast during the long exposure. Credit: ESA / Euclid / Euclid Consortium / NASA / M. Pöntinen et al.

Most comets come from the far-off Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud, which lie past the orbits of the outer planets. The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS that passed through our solar system in 2025 originated from somewhere else in the Milky Way. 

When a comet gets close to the sun, its ice becomes gas, which forms a bright, hazy glow around its head, called a coma, and a millions-of-miles-long tail.

Comets from our own solar system have changed very little since they formed, which makes them sort of like time capsules. Studying them helps scientists learn about the raw materials and conditions that created the planets.

"Comets may have brought water and organic compounds, the building blocks of life, to the early Earth and other parts of the solar system," NASA says. 

If your timeline has suddenly filled up with talk of linemen, no, it's not about the big boys working in the NFL trenches.

The linemen in question are the utility workers who climb poles and ride bucket trucks to keep the power on. And, as we near the tail end of Hurricane season, these workers are at the center of one of the internet's stranger recurring feuds: lineman wives versus "bucket bunnies."

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"Currently going down the rabbit hole of 'line wife' TikTok…I'm literally dying of cringe," says this X user, whose viral post has brought new attention to this subculture of blue-collar work.

What's a lineman?

For those who don't know, linemen build and maintain power lines, and that work becomes urgent during storms, wildfires, and other emergencies. Some people call them first responders, a label many would rather you didn't use. Either way, most communities love them for the simple reason that they restore power.

Doesn't hurt either that the work pays really well. According to Lineman Central, a training and job hub for line workers, the average U.S. lineman earns a little under $82,000 a year. Storm work pushes that much higher. The site reports that linemen restoring power after a hurricane or fire can earn $13,000 to $14,000 in a single week. Though it is a dangerous line of work.

Lineman Central reports about 2,400 serious nonfatal injuries per 100,000 workers each year, or roughly 1 in 42. Storm work is the most dangerous part of the job. Data from HAAS Alert puts line workers' fatality rate 400 percent above the national average for all occupations, with an average of 26 linemen killed on the job each year.

Altogether, with the occasional periods of travel combined with the high pay, linemen can be some of the highest earners in the areas they live in. Making their profession ripe for a subculture built around being their spouses.

Lineman wives and bucket bunnies

Lineman's wife culture belongs to the same family as military spouses and WAGs (the wives and girlfriends of pro athletes), just a tier below. In each case, the partner's job is all-consuming and often involves extensive travel. It makes sense that spouses build an identity and a community around it. On TikTok, that community has produced its own influencers, who document life as a lineman's spouse.

Each of those worlds also has a name for the women accused of exploiting that time apart. Hockey has puck bunnies, football has jersey chasers, baseball has cleat chasers, and music has groupies. Linework has bucket bunnies, named for the bucket trucks linemen use to reach the lines.

The accusation is the same as with any groupie. When linemen travel for storm work, bucket bunnies allegedly try to hook up with them to get a piece of that storm pay. In rural parts of the country, where linemen are highly regarded and often among the top earners, that's a real draw. The result is an annual hurricane-season standoff between lineman wives and the women they say are after their husbands — plus the people online discovering the drama for the first time.

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None of this is new. Newsweek and Jezebel both covered the feud back in 2022, and Reddit has plenty of snarky threads devoted to "entitled" spouses of service members (derogatorily called "dependas"). Nearly every job that pays relatively well, is dangerous, and keeps people away from home for long stretches has a similar niche subculture: oil wives, firefighter wives, police wives.

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The lineman's wife subculture is making the rounds again, thanks to the previously mentioned viral X post. Now that it's broken containment, many commentators are remarking on how cringe the whole thing is. So it's easy to see why it caught on.

On top of the cringe, the drama pairs a genuinely novel subculture — influencer careers built around a husband's blue-collar job — with some of the internet’s favorite targets. Linework carries working-class Southern stereotypes. The women who have become the faces of lineman wives on TikTok don’t fit the glossy image of a WAG, and they get mocked for making their husbands' jobs their entire personality. Add the usual judgment of "promiscuous" women, and you get a trashy Jerry Springer-esque showdown for people to gawk at. Cringe and entitled behavior aside, much of it runs on condescension toward Southerners, blue-collar workers, and women.

There's also the novelty. Most Americans have never thought much about the people who fix power lines, so discovering a whole soap opera built around them is fascinating, if a little voyeuristic.

Still, some corners of the internet are taking a kinder view. One X user argued it’s actually great that "regular working joes have groupies."

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Even the most underappreciated jobs deserve a fan club.

TL;DR: Become an AI pro with 11 informative courses totaling 44 hours of training in The Complete AI Skills Bundle, on sale now for $34.99 (reg. $79).

Opens in a new window Credit: Skillademia The Complete AI Skills Bundle $34.99
$79 Save $44.01   Get Deal

Sure, AI tools can help you get a lot done — but you first need to know how to work with them. The Complete AI Skills Bundle gives you hands-on training to hone this important skill, with 44 hours of learning on tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, and more.

Right now, you can secure permanent access to The Complete AI Skills Bundle for just $34.99 — less than $4 a course.

If your AI skills could use some sharpening, The Complete AI Skills Bundle lets you go from beginner to pro from the comfort of your couch.

These 11 courses total 44 hours of hands-on training to teach you about eight different models. Each one is taught by Skillademia, an online learning institution geared toward teaching practical, project-based courses on AI, so you’ll be in good hands with their talented instructors.

Master ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Midjourney, Runway, Leonardo AI, Adobe Firefly, and ElevenLabs within these courses, and even learn how to design faster with AI within PowerPoint. Project-based learning shows you how to build things step by step, so when you’re done, you have results you can actually use.

If you’re working to get better with Claude, you’ll appreciate the three-level Claude Track, which takes you from fundamentals to intermediate to advanced. You’ll also learn how to make images in Midjourney, Leonardo AI, and Firefly, and craft videos in Runway. If you need to make voiceovers or voice clones, you’ll master that within ElevenLabs.

Picking up AI skills for a side hustle? This course even shows you how to use Midjourney to turn your AI art and content into freelance income.

You’ll have lifetime access to The Complete AI Skills Bundle, complete with all future updates. You can access it on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Get The Complete AI Skills Bundle for just $34.99 today.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

TL;DR: Host website affordably for good with this lifetime subscription to the Hostdeal Unlimited Plan, on sale now for just $149.99 (reg. $1,800).

Opens in a new window Credit: Light Speed Technologies Hostdeal Unlimited Plan: Lifetime Subscription $149.99
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Right now, a lifetime subscription to Hostdeal Unlimited Plan is on sale for just $149.99.

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TL;DR: Life360's $99 Pet GPS bundle includes a free year of Silver membership for new and free-tier users. The new $99 setup slashes first-year tracking costs while giving pet owners access to real-time location data, a 100M+ member search network, and AI photo-matching with Petco Love Lost.

Opens in a new window Credit: Life360 Life360 Pet GPS $99
Includes one-year Silver membership. Shop Now

You notice the back gate is propped open, and your dog is nowhere to be found. That sudden panic is something every pet owner has experienced or dreads experiencing. But keeping tabs on your four-legged escape artist does not have to be complicated or expensive.

Life360 expanded its family safety ecosystem with the Life360 Pet GPS, a dedicated collar attachment that lets you monitor your pet along with your family members on the same in-app map. Starting today, Life360 is offering a $99 bundle that includes the GPS device and a full $0 introductory year of its Silver membership for new and free-tier users.

The hardware uses GPS and LTE connectivity to stream real-time location updates directly to your phone. You can draw custom virtual boundaries around your house or yard. If your pet crosses that line, an instant escape alert is sent to your entire Life360 Circle, so everyone is notified immediately.

Battery life lasts up to 14 days on a single charge. If the power dips below 6%, the device enters Reserve Mode, switching off high-power GPS and relying on Bluetooth updates through the Tile network. This low-power fallback keeps the tracker findable for up to six months, so a low battery does not cut off your search.

Community search tools and AI matching

Beyond live location updates, the device links into multiple recovery networks if your pet strays too far. Triggering a Lost Pet Alert broadcasts a notification with your pet's photo, details, and verified phone number to nearby Life360 members aged 18 and older, keeping the alert pinned to the local map for 72 hours.

Through a partnership with the national nonprofit Petco Love Lost, the system also uses AI photo-matching technology to cross-reference lost-pet reports with records from local shelters and community networks. Each setup also includes a scannable collar tag, allowing anyone who finds your pet to scan the tag with any smartphone — no app download required — to get your contact details immediately.

How to claim the deal

1. Purchase the tracker — Head over to Life360's site or Amazon to buy the Life360 Pet GPS.

2. Set up a Pet Profile — Download the Life360 app and build your pet's profile using a clear, well-lit photo containing only your pet, along with their breed, weight, and your verified phone number.

3. Activate Silver — New and free-tier users will be prompted inside the app during device setup to claim their $0 introductory year of Silver.

Your first 12 months of active tracking are fully covered by the initial $99 purchase. After year one, the Silver plan automatically renews at $99.99/year (billed annually), though you can cancel at any time in your account settings before the renewal date.

Grab the Life360 Pet GPS bundle on Life360's site or Amazon, and never worry about an open gate again.

TL;DR: Burger King is launching a Hello Kitty collab on Oct. 20. Each King Jr. Kids' Meal will feature one of six exclusive Hello Kitty and Friends by Sanrio toys, including a rare golden Hello Kitty toy.

If fast-food toy hype usually passes you by, Sanrio collectors will want to pay attention to this week's drop: Burger King is partnering with Hello Kitty and Friends for a nationwide, limited-time King Jr. Meal takeover starting Oct. 20.

The collab features six collectible figurines packaged in mystery blind boxes — each depicting a popular Sanrio character wearing a miniature Burger King crown and holding menu items.

What’s inside the collection

The blind-box lineup spotlights six popular Sanrio characters:

• Hello Kitty

• My Melody

• Kuromi

• Cinnamoroll

• Keroppi

• Golden Hello Kitty (a rare find)

Every order includes a themed King Jr. Meal bag and an exclusive Hello Kitty cardboard crown, while supplies last.

Credit: Burger King / Hello Kitty

For hardcore collectors, Burger King is also hosting a one-day claw machine event at its Downey, CA location on Oct. 23 (starting at 11 a.m. PST). Guests buying a King Jr. Meal get a claw machine attempt — including a shot at winning a solid 14-karat gold-plated Hello Kitty figurine.

"We love seeing Hello Kitty and Friends get the royal treatment at Burger King, with each character sporting their own iconic BK crown," said Jill Koch, Chief Brand Officer, Sanrio, Inc. "Bringing these beloved characters into the King Jr. Kids' Meal in such a playful way creates something special for fans of all ages to enjoy."

If you're looking for a cheap weekend activity to get your kids into the Halloween spirit, Lego is hosting free make-and-take events at participating stores across the U.S. and Canada.

On Oct. 25 from 12-2 p.m., Lego Stores are inviting fans to build and take home a limited-edition Lego Ghost Street build completely free of charge. As always, there is a small catch.

The event is strictly reserved for Lego Insiders. That's no reason to give up on this giveaway. If you aren't a member yet, you can sign up for free before heading to the store. We also recommend turning up early. The build is offered on a strict first-come, first-served basis while supplies last. Lines usually form 30 to 45 minutes before the start time, so it pays to be prepared.

There is always a lot of interest in these free events. No, you aren't walking away with a $100 build without spending anything, but you are taking home a miniature display model that you can't purchase. It's that exclusivity that gets the people going.

The Ghost Street make-and-take event is intended for participants aged 6+, and be sure to visit your local store page to check whether they're participating before heading out.

Elon Musk says he "got carried away" when working with the White House, and now thinks he shouldn't have continued running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for so long.

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk says he’ll give every kid in America a SpaceX share in 2027

President Donald Trump established DOGE within days of his inauguration last January, tasking vocal supporter Musk to lead it in reducing alleged government overspending. DOGE soon sent federal organisations into turmoil by taking sweeping measures such as laying off over 280,000 government workers and shutting down the U.S.' international aid agency.

Speaking on The Builders podcast on Tuesday, Musk agreed with host Walter Isaacson's suggestion that he appeared "intoxicated" by his proximity to power while working with the White House. Isaacson specifically referenced an incident last February in which the billionaire waved around a chainsaw while on stage at a conservative conference, calling it "the chainsaw for bureaucracy."

"Yeah, I think that's true," said Musk, indicating that he regretted being so public-facing. "I got carried away basically."

Musk gained significant attention for various stunts during his time working with the Trump administration, such as his infamous "Roman"/Nazi salute. He and Trump also co-hosted a Tesla ad together at the White House, with the president deriding Musk's critics and purchasing a $90,000 Tesla Model S Plaid.

"It was interesting to sort of go around with President Trump and go on Marine One and Air Force One and all that sort of stuff," said Musk. "It was a little bit [seductive]. I mean, it was kind of cool 'cause I'm just there in the Oval Office while all these like, big momentous decisions are being made and, you know, sometimes having some impact on what's being done.

"But I think maybe I should have been more in the background, and probably only had it last for, you know, a month or two. Because at that point you've sort of seen most of what there is to see within a month or two."

Musk had initially claimed DOGE would reduce government spending by at least $2 trillion, but such savings failed to materialise. The billionaire later revised DOGE's goal down to $150 billion, yet even then, many claimed savings were either exaggerated or could not be verified. 

Even so, Musk still seems to believe he could have eliminated the U.S. government's debts had he been given even more free reign.

"The problem is if you try to solve the deficit and stop wasteful spending, you make a lot of enemies in that situation," said Musk. "And President Trump is not, you know, he likes to be liked."

Musk declined to speak about exactly what happened when he eventually did leave DOGE last May, saying only that it was "a weird weekend." News of Musk's departure came just one day after he had heavily criticised Trump's tax bill, saying that it "increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing." 

Trump and Musk had been fairly aligned prior to this point. Musk told The Builders that he had supported President Donald Trump's run for office out of a desire for a free market economy and "less bureaucracy," as well as interests such as "aspirationally sensible spending."

However, their disagreement about the tax bill sparked a fresh feud between the two, with the president and the billionaire soon attacking each other on their respective social media platforms Truth Social and X.

"Let's let sleeping dogs lie," Musk told Isaacson when asked about the split. "Let's not put a spade down in the backyard, type of thing. You never know what you're going to find."

Though DOGE's existence was always intended to be temporary, Musk departed well before its previously planned conclusion on July 4, 2026. The initiative quietly died after he left, and no longer existed by November 2025.

"I came to the conclusion that there was no way we were going to solve the deficit from within the government. Impossible," said Musk. "Maybe if the president made that his primary goal, we could do that…. I came to the conclusion that the only way we're going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots."

Musk has refocused his attention on his various tech companies since leaving DOGE, including SpaceXSI.

Today's Connections: Sports Edition will be easier for people who live in St. Louis.

As we've shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.

Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight, and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable What is Connections: Sports Edition?

The NYT's latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication's sports coverage. The sports Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words, and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes before the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. Here's a hint for today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Playing H.O.R.S.E

• Green: Missouri sports

• Blue: Cheeseheads

• Purple: Blue teams

Here are today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Basketball Shots

• Green: St. Louis Teams

• Blue: Packers WRs, Past and Present

• Purple: Blue____

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections: Sports Edition #758 is...

What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?

• Basketball Shots: ALLEY-OOP, DUNK, FADEAWAY, FREE THROW

• St. Louis Teams: BILLIKENS, BLUES, CARDINALS, ST. LOUIS CITY

• Packers WRs, Past and Present: ADAMS, DRIVER, GOLDEN, NELSON

• Blue____: DEVILS, JACKETS, JAYS, LINE

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

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

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to today's Connections.

Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalog.

Released in August 2025, Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.

Currently, if you're stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.

How to play Pips

If you've ever played dominoes, you'll have a passing familiarity with how Pips is played. As we've shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don't necessarily have to match.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for October 21, 2026

The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible — and common — for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.

Here are common examples you'll run into across the difficulty levels:

• Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.

• Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.

• Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.

• Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.

• Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.

If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for October 21, 2026 Easy difficulty hints, answers for October 21 Pips

Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally; 6-3, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 6-3, placed horizontally; 2-4, placed horizontally.

Number (10): Everything in this space must add up to 10. The answer is 2-4, placed horizontally; 6-6, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 6-6, placed horizontally.

Less Than (2): Everything in this space must be less than 2. The answer is 1-0, placed horizontally.

Medium difficulty hints, answers for October 21 Pips

Greater Than (4): Everything in this space must be greater than 4. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed horizontally.

Not Equal: Everything in this space must be different. The answer 5-2, placed horizontally; 0-1, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (7): Everything in this space must be greater than 7. The answer is 5-1, placed horizontally; 3-4, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (5): Everything in this space must be greater than 5. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally; 2-6, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 2-6, placed horizontally.

Number (8): Everything in this space must add up to 8. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally.

Hard difficulty hints, answers for October 21 Pips

Less Than (3): Everything in this space must be less than 3. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically.

Greater Than (3): Everything in this space must be greater than 3. The answer is 4-1, placed vertically.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically.

Less Than (3): Everything in this space must be less than 3. The answer is 2-0, placed vertically.

Greater Than (0): Everything in this space must be greater than 0. The answer is 0-4, placed horizontally.

Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 5-5, placed vertically.

Number (9): Everything in this space must add up to 9. The answer is 3-6, placed horizontally.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 1-2, placed vertically.

Number (0): Everything in this space must add up to 0. The answer is 0-0, placed vertically.

Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 4-4, placed horizontally; 4-5, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (1): Everything in this space must be greater than 1. The answer is 5-2, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 4-5, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 5-3, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 3-4, placed horizontally.

Number (7): Everything in this space must add up to 7. The answer is 4-2, placed horizontally; 1-3, placed vertically.

Not Equal: Everything in this space must be different. The answer 3-4, placed horizontally; 1-5, placed vertically.

Number (3): Everything in this space must add up to 3. The answer is 1-3, placed vertically.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 1-5, placed vertically.

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

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.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

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

Ashy.

Hurdle Word 1 answer

SOOTY

Hurdle Word 2 hint

Reward.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for October 21, 2026 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

PRIZE

Hurdle Word 3 hint

Cold precipitation.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for October 21, 2026 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Meanings for each word for Oct. 21, 2026 Hurdle Word 3 answer

SLEET

Hurdle Word 4 hint

Jacked.

Hurdle Word 4 answer

STOLE

Final Hurdle hint

Stocking material.

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

NYLON

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

Living in a dense neighborhood used to mean dealing with noise and parking. Now it means your neighbors can slow down devices in your own home without ever touching them. Your neighbors don't even need to do this on purpose, which is part of what makes it hard to fight against.

I'm generally pretty good at coming up with the right words to find what I need on Google. But every now and then, I run into a question where I don't quite know the right vocabulary to type into a search bar, or where it would take a paragraph to explain what I'm looking for. That's usually when I realize I've been staring at a problem for 20 minutes that I could solve in two if I just pointed my camera at it. Here are five times Google Lens came to my rescue.

Infrared (IR) remote controls have been commonplace since the early 1980s, and are still around today. Despite the development of Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Thread, and Matter, my TV still works using this old technology. Infrared has some important benefits that modern protocols still can't match.

Most tool buyers don't think much about where the electronics live inside their gear. You pick up a drill, it works, and you move on. Ryobi's ONE+ system makes a different choice than most of the industry, putting battery-management logic in the pack instead of the tool. That sounds like a big deal, but it doesn't seem to change much.

Netflix puts out a pretty wide array of original shows, ranging from massively popular icons like Stranger Things to questionable and poorly rated shows like Hype House. Sometimes, though, Netflix puts out some brilliant masterpieces that don't quite reach mainstream popularity, instead garnering cult followings or, more sadly, fading slowly into obscurity.

TL;DR: Get a lifetime Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 license for $27.97 (reg. $499.99) through Oct. 20.

Opens in a new window Credit: Microsoft Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 $27.97
$499.99 Save $472.02   Get Deal

Most professional IDEs are sold as subscriptions, so you keep paying for as long as you use them. That includes most versions of Visual Studio Pro, but there’s a way around it. Right now, you can actually get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 for Windows as a lifetime license, and it’s on sale for $27.97 (reg. $499.99).

This version of Visual Studio adds AI to debugging and performance work. When you run the profiler or debugger, AI agents suggest fixes and can generate unit tests for the code in front of you. IntelliCode also looks at your own codebase, including your variable names, functions, and libraries, and finishes lines or whole blocks for you.

Large solutions load up to twice as fast, a change you’ll notice if your projects take a while to open. If you use Visual Studio 2022, there’s nothing to migrate. You can install 2026 next to it, and your current projects and extensions still work. Microsoft also split the IDE from the .NET and C++ build tools, so updating Visual Studio doesn’t change the tool versions your builds rely on.

Live Share lets coworkers code and debug in the same session without cloning your repo or installing your dependencies. You can use Visual Studio 2026 to build .NET MAUI mobile and desktop apps, Blazor web apps in C#, and .NET or C++ apps for Windows, Linux, and containers. You can install it on one PC running Windows 10, Windows 11, or Windows Server 2019 or 2022.

Pay for Visual Studio once instead of keeping up a subscription. Through Oct. 20 at 11:59 p.m. PT, you can get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2026 for just $27.97.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

I had a dream. A dream where I had a stable Ethernet connection in every corner of the house. But wiring up the whole place was impractical (and borderline impossible), so I've almost resigned myself to using Wi-Fi, which is famously unreliable in my area.

My homelab runs a lot of my house. My smart home, media streaming, photo library, and dozens of smaller apps are spread across two computers running Proxmox. As far as I could tell, everything was healthy, but to make sure, I asked Claude to access both devices and look for problems without changing anything. It found some serious issues that I'd missed for months because none of them had broken anything that I could see.