Puzzles

You're currently playing a heated game of Scrabble or Words with Friends. The game is close, too close for comfort. But you're not sweating because you're confident. You play a huge word that puts you in the lead, but then when your letter tiles are drawn... We've all been th ...more

Remember that PSP you had? I pretty much dropped mine when smartphones became more prevalent in the mobile gaming scene. Why would I want to carry around a huge PlayStation Portable when I've already got an Android in my pocket? Still, I miss the days of PSP gaming. Early on, ...more

It's December 11th. Only 14 days left until Christmas. But today is something more than just a countdown date for the quintessential holiday—it's Angry Birds Day, which marks the one-year anniversary of the popular mobile video game. Today, Angry Birds fans around the world w ...more

You probably know Lenovo from their low-cost Windows PCs here in the states, but something you may not be aware of is that they also make smartphones. Right now, their biggest market is in China, but a rumored merger with BlackBerry could make Lenovo a contender in North Ameri ...more

Dating websites allow you to see a person in a very intimate context, framing their successes and accomplishments in life to an important audience. The information contained in these profiles often can't be found elsewhere, offering a unique look into the personal life of the ...more

Google's "At A Glance" widget gives you the current weather conditions and upcoming events from your Google Calendar in a handy spot right at the top of your home screen. But on Pixel phones, this widget is permanently embedded into the launcher, so you can't just long-press i ...more

Okay, so you rooted your Android phone .... now what? There are a few ducks you need to get into a row, like backing up your stock boot image, getting SafetyNet sorted, and improving security with biometrics. But there are also awesome root mods waiting for you — just don't ge ...more

The game has undergone many transitions over the years, since its days as LEXIKO (1931) to its briefness as CRISS CROSS WORDS to its current and amalgamated, renowned brand of SCRABBLE. There has been many editions of the word board game along that historic metamorphosis, and ...more

If you want to get started sniffing Wi-Fi networks, you usually need to start with a wireless network adapter. But thanks to a Wi-Fi sniffing library written in Arduino and the ultra-cheap ESP8266 chip, you might not need one. For less than $10 in electronics, you can build a ...more

Let's face it, not every logophile is addicted to Scrabble. Without the use of a timer, Scrabble can be a pretty slow game. Even in clubs and tournaments where the standard time limit is 25 minutes per person for a two-player game. Now, take away time restrictions and add two ...more

After many years of rumors, the second-generation iPhone SE is here. At $399, it is the most inexpensive iPhone Apple has sold since the original iPhone SE came out. And while the new SE comes with Apple's typical five-watt power adapter, the smartphone supports fast charging ...more

Lenovo brought out the big guns for CES 2014, with the Vibe Z showcased as the Chinese company's' first foray into the LTE smartphone space. Slated for a February release, the ultra-thin and extremely light smartphone will certainly be in the running for top smartphones of thi ...more

Contrary to popular belief, augmented reality apps have been available for a while now. I remember using the Layar app (still available for iOS and Android) to explore nearby businesses and landmarks with varying success via an early-generation Android handset. It would be ha ...more

The Pixel 5 is a great value proposition in this era of $1,500 phones. With its reasonable price tag, fully open-sourced software, and unlockable bootloader, it's also an ideal phone for rooting. The process of rooting the Pixel 5 is a tried and true method: Unlock the bootlo ...more

Last week, I highlighted 5 of my favorite free interactive live wallpapers that you could use on your Android device. But where do you go from there? What's the next step up? While the regular old interactive live wallpapers are amazing, if you can't stop thinking about your ...more

Privacy has been a heated topic in recent months, with everyone now up in arms over unauthorized leaks and exposures. And guess what—tablet and smartphone users are just as vulnerable. Remember, the Google Play Store is unfiltered, so malware can just as easily make its way o ...more

ADB and Fastboot are powerful tools that have always required a computer. But with the right setup, you can now send commands to a phone using another phone. The ADB and Fastboot Magisk module, by osm0sis and Surge1223, will turn your phone into an ADB terminal using root acc ...more

Over the years, mobile gaming has become a phenomenon, rivaling in magnitude with its console and PC-based counterparts. We even have mobile versions of Fortnite and PUBG now, games that require lots of processing power to run. But when you just want a quick game to play in th ...more

The end game is a very important aspect of playing Scrabble. If you have just a few letters left on your rack and there are none left in the draw bag, but you're currently losing the game, you still might have a chance to win if you play your cards (er… tiles) right. No matter ...more

Trivia games are a great way to test your knowledge and learn about people and things you never knew of before. They're ideal in a group setting because they can serve as the perfect conversation starter when you're enjoying time with friends, family, or even complete stranger ...more

Don't always believe the marketing hype. "PlayStation Certified" does not mean anything to a softModder. All this indicates is that a smartphone or tablet labeled as "PlayStation Certified" has met the guidelines and hardware requirements issued by Sony to display PlayStation ...more

Google is an incredibly useful database of indexed websites, but querying Google doesn't search for what you type literally. The algorithms behind Google's searches can lead to a lot of irrelevant results. Still, with the right operators, we can be more exact while searching f ...more

Minecraft never ceases to amaze, from programmable pianos to serial killers. But now someone has tackled M. C. Escher's famous Relativity lithograph from 1953 that depicts a world not bound by the normal laws of gravity. It's an amazing puzzle of a three-dimensional world trap ...more

Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! A short while ago, I did a tutorial on conducting passive OS fingerprinting with p0f. As you remember, p0f is different from other operating system fingerprinting tools as it does not send any packets to the target, instead it simply takes ...more

Computer viruses are terrifying. They are undetectable, dangerous, and operate constantly right under your nose. For the average computer user, there are only a few repair options. You could buy expensive antivirus software that causes more problems than it fixes, you can wipe ...more

Move over Rubik's Cube, there's a new puzzle in town. The Petaminx. The beautifully designed and custom built Petaminx has almost 1,000 moving parts. Peta- actually means 1,000,000,000,000,000, although that number could refer to the endless number of solutions. Based on And ...more

Apps don't need to come bundled with an entire browser just to be able to display web pages — instead, they can call on the system WebView browser to render content for them. Android's default WebView renderer is Google software, which isn't quite as privacy-forward as some ot ...more

Ah, butter—the (literally) heart-stopping star of the dairy world. Everything tastes better with it, from pie crusts and cookies to veggies and steaks. Hell, you can even fry things in butter if you want the best-tasting fried foods of your (short) life. Don't Miss: Compound ...more

Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! In today's hack, we're going to have a bit of Halloween fun. Have you ever had a boss who made you miserable with his micro-management and nagging? Maybe you thought he unfairly fired your friend/colleague? Well, now here's your chance to ge ...more

I love cryptography. It is like a great gigantic puzzle for me to solve. However, it is more important than that. It is also how we keep secrets safe. Not just sorta safe either, but really safe. Until recently, if you wanted to use strong encryption you had to either learn d ...more

The concept of Scrabble and Words with Friends is the same—play words, score points, win. But the games require different strategy in terms of letter placement, premium squares, tile point values and word choices. Here's the main differences between the two games. Scrabble ha ...more

When the much buzzed Facebook profile page redesign was released back in December, French artist and co-director of ad agency La Bande Originale Alexandre Oudin came up with an innovative way to maximize the visual possibilities of the page. His clever "hack" created a ripple ...more

Google switched to gestural navigation in Android 9, and in removing the back/home/recents buttons, they were able to greatly reduce the size of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. However, there's still a white line, aka "The Pill," taking up space to show you whe ...more

Now that you have your two-letter words down and have practiced your skills, it's time to move on to another important part of Scrabble gameplay—the opening move. There's a well known adage that states, “The player going first will win 54% of the time—all other things being eq ...more

By "God," I mean Morley Davidson, John Dethridge, Herbert Kociemba, Tomas Rokicki and about 35 CPU-years. Ever since Erno Rubik conceived the Rubik's Cube in 1974, math-minded cubers have been trying to find the most efficient number of moves required to solve the 3x3 Rubik's ...more

Staying inside during the coronavirus pandemic isn't easy for most of us. As important as it is to keep away from others, it can be challenging to keep to ourselves day after day. That's why mobile game developers are stepping in to help; many are making their games free for a ...more