Scrabble Bingo of the Day: NOSEGAY [n] A nosegay is simply a bouquet of flowers, typically given as gifts. It comes from Middle English, from the words nose and gay, which in this case means brightly colored and showy. It does not reference homosexuality; the modern sense of ...more
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: CABRESTA [n/pl.] A cabresta (also cabestro or cabresto) is simply a lasso, a rope formed with a running noose that's used on ranches and Western plains for catching horse and cattle. Cabresta comes from the Spanish word halter, which refers to the h ...more
This Blender graphic shows my idea of an Egyptian style Scrabble board, inspired by the ancient board game Senet. It features the Nefertiti (Latin) font, so you don't have to read hieroglyphs to make words. The white hieroglyphs on the black granite tiles was inspired by inscr ...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
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: DAUBERY [n] An unskillful painting or work, one that is executed in a messy or inexpert way. Since art is highly subjective, I won't point out any dauberies. You probably already have a few in mind. DAUBERY [n/pl.] -ERIES a bad or inexpert painting ...more
Alec Baldwin loves word games? Enough to get kicked off an airplane? Apparently. Yesterday, while sitting in first class on his American Airlines flight back to New York from LAX, a flight attendant "reamed" him off the plane for playing the popular Scrabble clone, Words with ...more
When learning any new dance, it's important to take your time and constantly practice any new steps you learn in order to embed it into your very mind. As dance intructors always say, practice makes perfect. So when watching this tutorial, remember those words as you are attem ...more
Jedijawa is a self-described "sci-fi geek" and public interest attorney who enjoys SCRABBLE, maybe more than he should. Over time, he wrote one too many posts on SCRABBLE, which prompted him to consolidate them into one webpage on his site. He's got a way with "words" and I ...more
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: HELLEBORE [n] A hellebore is any of the approximately 20 plants from the genus Helleborus, many of which are poisonous. Hellebores are herbaceous perennial flowering plants from Eurasia related to the buttercup family, having showy flowers with peta ...more
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: GEOPHAGY [n] Geophagy is the practice of eating earth, especially chalk or clay, in famine-stricken regions. It applies to both wild animals and humans. When humans eat soil-like substances, it's usually to augment a scanty or mineral-deficient diet ...more
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: DHOURRA [n] Dhourra is a type of sorghum, a genus of cereal grasses cultivated in warm climates worldwide for its edible grain. Sorghum originated in North Africa, but is a favorite crop in countries where arid soil exists and frequent droughts occu ...more
Get ready to rack your brains, because it's time for another Scrabble Challenge! I may have gone a little overboard on last week's challenge (there was over 25 anagrams to solve), so I'm slimming things down this week. This time, there's only one puzzle. Use the rack of lette ...more
SCRABBLE: 14 points; GRAFFITI: 15 points; MARRIAGE: 11 points; YES: 6 points. When playing a game of Scrabble, those are the minimal amount of points for each of the given words (not including blank tiles). But for 28-year-old Jeff Gurwin, it's more than just 46 points on the ...more
Do you have AMNESIA? How about SYPHILIS? Or have you gotten SODOMIZED? Well, the people pictured below do, and I don't feel sorry for them, not at all——those words would kill on the SCRABBLE board! At the start of this millennium, the international advertising agency Ogilvy & ...more
Dangers abound in the world of srteet art, however one danger stands out as increasingly dangerous. Gangs around the country use graffiti to mark their terriotory and do not take kindly to street artists. In several parts of los angelos gang members will stop you in the middle ...more
Scrabble Bingo of the Day: * CAGANER [n] A caganer is a small figurine of a person defecating in place, pants humorously around the character's ankles. It's a traditional Christmas decoration in Catalonia, Spain and in neighboring areas, where it's placed within the nativity ...more
A couple of days ago, I had some questions regarding the mighty tentacled beast of our oceans— the octopus. Actually, I was just curious as to what an octopus was, and I found the answer, which was a cephalopod mollusk in the order Octopoda. But that's not all I came across. ...more
Ah, turducken. The fondest of all portmanteau words and the tastiest of all Thanksgiving day meals. Turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken—three glorious poultry meats molded into one marvelous, boneless hunk of flesh that any sane carnivore wouldn't ...more
Scrabble has invaded just about every medium out there. It started as a mere board game, but has since spawned numerous board game spinoffs and variations, an electronic version, mobile apps for just about anything (Android, iPhone, iPhone, iPad and Kindle), games for both PC ...more
WonderHowTo is made up niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. This week: Create a redstone calculator in Min ...more
WonderHowTo is made up niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Hacking, crafting, mining & more… just another ...more
Think of your brain like a muscle, if you train it correctly and diligently, it will perform at its top capacity. The retention of information is a skill like any other that can be improved with some practice and even rest when appropriate. Train your brain to retain informat ...more
When you don't feel like talking, let your iPhone do all the work. Yes, your iPhone can speak for you, and it works over phone calls and FaceTime calls. It will even work its magic over your iPhone's speaker for in-person conversations. While Apple created this feature to sup ...more
Is the emoji you're using really the one you think it is? While you can use any emoji that looks like it fits what you have to say, it may have been created for a different purpose. On an iPhone, it's easy to find that purpose by retrieving the actual name of the emoji in Appl ...more
Dirty, malformed, and outright mischievous text strings have long been the enemy of interactive website developers. Strings contain any combination of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation, and are entered into text boxes on websites by users. These strings in particular c ...more
The sovereignty that's granted when we jailbreak our iOS 7 devices can only be described with one word—liberating. With this freedom comes countless themes and apps that let us manipulate our devices to really own them and turn them into something that is truly ours. Activato ...more
If you're not into making your own Scrabble coasters out of Scrabble tiles, these are the next best thing (though a little more complicated). And better than having tons of tiles on the same coaster is just being one tile itself, so you can make words out of the coasters! Thou ...more
Cases and stickers are always great, but they aren't the only way to customize an iPhone. The software on your device is full of customization options, from a better-looking home screen and cooler lock screen wallpapers to app icon changes and a system-wide dark mode. There's ...more
Even for those of us who enjoy spending time alone at home, at a certain point, it just gets boring. We all need social interaction, but with stay-at-home orders, that can be hard to come by. If you're feeling the itch to hang out with friends and have a good time, you should ...more
Whether you've celebrated multiple cake days or you're just now getting your feet wet with Reddit, it's a rite of passage to choose your preferred smartphone client. Quick spoiler: Your best option most certainly is not the official Reddit app. Reddit's mobile site is pretty ...more
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! As hackers, we are often faced with the hurdle of cryptography and encryption. In some cases, we use it to hide our actions and messages. Many applications and protocols use encryption to maintain confidentiality and integrity of data. To be a ...more
Your iPhone's built-in Voice Memos app is a great way to record the audio around you, whether it be conversations, lectures, meetings, interviews, discussions, chitchat, gossip, or other kinds of talks. But if your goal is to record audio on the down-low without being noticed, ...more
Spotlight, Apple's system-wide search feature, lets you search for apps, contacts, messages, webpages, music, notes, and other content that's on and off your iPhone. On iOS, it's known as "Search," and you can access it by swiping your home screen down or swiping open the Toda ...more
Ever since 3D Touch's introduction in iOS 9 for the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, a little-known trick for moving the cursor around and selecting text was built into Apple's stock keyboard. On iOS 12 or later, it works for all iPhone models with or without 3D Touch or Haptic Touch ba ...more
Whether you like it or not, certain songs get stuck in your head. You might be driving to work or school when suddenly Cher's 1998 lead single "Believe" plays on the radio. Video: . You pay no heed to the song because you're stuck in traffic, and all you can think about is get ...more
The number of passwords I have for different websites and emails is easily in the triple digits. And if I had to actually remember all of those individual passwords, I would be locked out of accounts on a daily basis. That's why I use the "remember my password" feature whenev ...more
The Calculator app is probably one of Apple's most-used iPhone apps, yet I always meet people who don't know all the little tricks there are to using it more efficiently. You may know most of them, but there's a chance you don't or at least forget about some of them. What a " ...more
When iOS 14 came out, Apple released Translate, an app for translating voice and text between several languages (even within Safari). Unfortunately, it's not as comprehensive as some third-party apps or even Siri. That's why Apple uses Microsoft's translation services within S ...more
Pick up any iPhone with a Home button, and you'll notice something peculiar when compared to your iPhone with Face ID. If you press the Side button (aka Sleep/Wake) on the Home button model, it sleeps immediately. When you press the Side button your Face ID model, it lags a bi ...more
I hate to break it to you, but you're probably here because you were trolled. Thanks to a Photoshopped image making rounds across Twitter, Apple fans were tricked into believing that iOS 8 allowed them to lock individual apps, accessible only through a passcode or fingerprint ...more
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the commu ...more
A pair of properties from the soon-to-merge Warner Media and Discovery companies chose different platforms for their augmented reality marketing, with Warner film Space Jam: A New Legacy opting to go with Facebook and Discovery Channel publishing an AR experience through Snapc ...more
Apple Notes has received many improvements over its lifetime, but noticeably absent year after year was the ability to easily add quick links in notes to other notes for reference. The latest software updates for iPhone, iPad, and Mac finally address this with a simple note-li ...more
Huawei has been in a losing battle with the US government for around ten years, with the last year being the spike of Huawei's problems. Because of US pushback against some Chinese-based smartphone manufacturers due to security concerns, Huawei is hoping to limit its dependenc ...more
Cold brewing tea and coffee are all the rage, and for good reason: they're idiot-proof. I, personally, am a total dunce at brewing coffee. It either ends up strong enough to peel paint from a car or so weak that you can see through it. Meanwhile, I have friends who inevitably ...more
Microsoft.com is one of the most extensive domains on the internet with thousands of registered subdomains. Windows 10 will ping these subdomains hundreds of times an hour, making it challenging to firewall and monitor all of the requests made by the operating system. An attac ...more
Mobile World Congress is a four-day event that is both a showcase and conference starring prominent figures in the mobile industry. Oftentimes, OEMs will use this event to announce new products for the upcoming year — and this year shouldn't be any different. Here are all the ...more
While it's not usually the first thing everyone looks at after installing a new iOS software update, I'd give the new accessibility features on your iPhone priority attention because there are some highly valuable tools that even users without disabilities can enjoy. Of cours ...more
In recent years, accessibility features on the iPhone have been given more attention by Apple, which means more people with disabilities can take advantage of everything iOS has to offer. These features are also beneficial for non-disabled users, and iOS 14 has an exciting one ...more
You can take a photo on your iPhone with just one tap or press, but you can also use the Camera app hands-free for more impressive images. Doing so lets you take more detailed selfies, include your whole group in the frame, or get steadier results in Night mode — and it's easy ...more
A temporary email can go a long way. Using your actual email to sign up for a mailing list to receive 10% off a purchase doesn't make sense if you don't use the website much. It means you'll have to deal with spam emails from then on, which is why an anonymous email is perfect ...more
For all of its many perks — from the best iPhone camera system money can buy, to arguably the best smartphone display on the market — the iPhone 12 Pro Max is undeniably huge. It has the largest iPhone screen to date despite being 0.46 cubic inches smaller than the iPhone 11 P ...more
Traveling abroad can be a hassle. Between the flight, hotels, food, and the languages barriers, it can be a lot to manage. There's one tool you have that can help with all of this — your smartphone. Fortunately, nowadays, you don't have to change your carrier to continue using ...more
Update (Fall 2020): Samsung's version of Android 11 is already in its testing phases! One UI 3.0 is expected to hit recent flagship Galaxy devices towards the end of this year, so check out the new list of features: New Version: All the New Features & Changes in Samsung's One ...more
The year 2020 was a pivotal span of time during which the word "virtual" took on a brand new meaning. Instead of referring to VR or augmented reality, the term was hijacked to describe meeting across long distances through a variety of software tools, most often through video. ...more