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Oh hey there! If you're here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we're serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today's answer.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for October 23's Wordle solution revealed. 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 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections today: Hints and answers for October 23 Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for October 23 Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

Mickey's friend.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

There is one letter that appears twice.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter G.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

GOOFY.

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle 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.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for October 23

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

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 yesterday's Wordle.

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. 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 October 23's 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?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. 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 of 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 until 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: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for October 23 Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

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

• Yellow:

• Green:

• Blue:

• Purple:

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections categories

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

• Yellow: Yellow___

• Green: Green___

• Blue: Blue___

• Purple: Purple____

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 #500 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Yellow___: CAB, JACKET, JOURNALISM, PAGES

• Green___: BERET, GOBLIN, SALAD, THUMB

• Blue____: JAY, JEANS, MOON, WHALE

• Purple___: HAZE, HEART, PROSE, RAIN

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

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for October 23

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 yesterday's Connections.

Why has Elon Musk, whose Twitter/X is reportedly bleeding ad revenue, gone all in on supporting misinformation maven Donald Trump? Why is he bouncing around stages wearing multiple shades of MAGA hat? Why test election law now, so close to November 5, with a dubious $1 million lottery for registered voters in swing states who've signed Musk's equally dubious petition?

These questions are being raised on the campaign trail, after VP candidate Tim Walz joked in a speech Tuesday that Musk was effectively Trump’s VP pick. In a made-for-memes moment, Walz wondered why Musk had started “dancing like a dipshit” at the former president’s rallies.

The answer may not be that Musk has just become a rabid red-pilled true believer. The owner's X feed has long been full of far-right fibs that aren't getting Community Notes, and yet even now he seems reluctant to go down the deepest MAGA rabbit holes — for example, declining to receive a book of conspiracy theories on the 2020 election at his first solo Pennsylvania event this week.

Nor is this about Musk's tax bill. You might think that would be the main reason for the world's richest man to vault a candidate like Trump, who promises to cut his effective tax rate, to the head of the federal government. But based on ProPublica's IRS investigations, Musk likely pays little to no federal income tax already. Trump would try to lower the tax rate on sales of stock, something Musk does a lot — but it's Congress that ultimately decides whether to cut taxes, not the president.

No, it looks increasingly like Musk's main concern is evading consequences from the feds, according to an exhaustive New York Times report.

Four of Musk's companies face a total of "at least 20" federal probes. The Departments of Justice, Labor and Transportation are looking into legal violations and discrimination lawsuits at Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. And X? The SEC and the FTC are all over it for alleged violations around Musk's $44 billion purchase. Just this month, Musk was a no-show at a court-ordered SEC interview.

Musk has a history of dragging the SEC and other regulators through long court battles, then paying fines that pale in comparison to his wealth. But now, with so many fronts to fight on, 2025 may be the year that the billionaire's disdain finally catches up with him given the volume of investigations detailed in the New York Times report.

On top of his federal battles, Musk is facing a dozen private lawsuits from Tesla owners' families, three of which are slated to go to trial in 2025. The lawsuits allege that Musk made Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities seem more advanced than they were, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries. The National Highway Safety Traffic Administration and the DOJ are looking into the same thing.

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At the same time, Musk currently holds an incredible amount of sway within the federal government – as one of its largest contractors. The Times dug up nearly $16 billion in contracts for his companies over the last decade, the vast majority with the Pentagon and NASA. And Musk's reliance on government money is growing: last year alone, his companies won $3 billion from a total of 17 federal agencies.

That's 3 billion reasons every year to stymie any investigations that could bring Musk's house of contracts crashing down.

And here's what Trump has offered Musk: his own "government efficiency commission" that would recommend cuts to federal agencies. Crucially, it would also suggest changes to regulations. Trump and his Project 2025 supporters have vowed a sweeping purge of federal government employees. In a second Trump administration, Musk could be one of the most powerful voices at the table deciding the direction of that purge.

There it is: Not a conspiracy theory, but an out-in-the-open offer to let Musk torment his investigators. Musk may dress it up as "D.O.G.E.," referencing one of his favorite memes, but here's how the Times report puts it: The department "would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest."

Given the eye-popping amount of money involved, "potentially enormous conflict of interest" could be an understatement. In any case, growing Musk's $3 billion-a-year government business — and safeguarding his businesses from investigations that may tank the stock — is worth bouncing around swing states waving giant checks in any number of MAGA hats.

For nearly as long as the internet has been around, there's a particular rhythm for any curious person with a WiFi connection. You have a question, you Google it, you get an answer. But a mishap during this week's Monday Night Football and the NFL's onside kick rules has show just how unreliable Google can be these days — and how the search giant can help spread misinformation.

The confusion was sparked by an unfortunate turn of events. During the waning moments of the MNF matchup the Baltimore Ravens and Tampa Bay Buccaneers — one of two ESPN games last evening — Bucs star receiver Chris Godwin suffered a gruesome injury with his team trailing by 10 points. Fans wondered why such a star player was on the field at all at when the team was down by two scores with less than a minute remaining in the game.

"We're just trying to win the ballgame," Tampa head coach Todd Bowles told reporters. "We're still down 10, trying to get extra points, kick another onside kick. It just happened."

That quote, in part, sparked the confusion. You see, the NFL revamped its kickoff before this season and changed, well, everything, including the rules for onside kicks. Surprise onside kicks were effectively banned, for instance, because the new "dynamic" kickoff requires the kicking team to declare to the refs they're trying an onside kick. Amid all these changes — and the NFL's penchant for making rules complicated — it tracks that confusion might arise.

Crucially, at one point there was a proposed rule change limiting how many onside kicks a team could attempt. The rule was not adopted — trailing teams can attempt unlimited onside kicks in the fourth quarter — but it did appear in an article in Sporting News that was ultimately corrected. But lots of folks online were under the false impression that, actually, the Bucs had exhausted their onside kick chances and left Godwin in the game despite that fact.

To recap: Viewers reasonably thought the Buccaneers were putting a star player's health at risk in a hopeless situation, all because they mistakenly believed teams had a limited number of attempts to regain possession. In reality, NFL rules allow the Buccaneers to keep trying late-game kicks aimed at recovering the control of the ball. None of this is easy to understand, but it looks like Google may have made matters worse.

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In fact, Google could actually be to blame for all the confusion among viewers. For some reason, Google searches on Monday night resulted in faulty information. After seeing the confusion while watching the game, I searched the rules for myself. Google spat out a clipped answer at the top of the search, citing the corrected Sporting News article, with the wrong information that a team was limited to two onside kicks per game. It's not clear when, exactly, Sporting News made its correction, so it's possible Google was slow in simply catching up to a correction made by the outlet. But Google showed me an answer no longer present in the article itself.

But Google's AI-powered search — a quite controversial feature — got it wrong as well. Its AI overview told me an NFL team was limited to one onside kick per game. It's almost funny to not only get the information wrong, but to get it wrong with two different incorrect answers — though it appears the AI overview was different for other users.

Mashable reached out to Google for comment and will update the story if and when we receive a response.

A quite faulty result from Google search. Credit: Screenshot: Google Credit: Screenshot: Google

While this situation is relatively low stakes, it is a frightening representation of how quickly misinformation spreads online — especially with Google's aid. Things move fast. It's not just random people who get tripped up. For instance, a respected sports publication like Awful Announcing shared the wrong information, which, of course, would confuse more folks scrolling.

Credit: Screenshot: X

It's not hard to imagine the person running Awful Announcing's X account doing a quick Google, getting fed false info, then posting it. Ultimately Awful Announcing's post was corrected — as were Google's results — but the misinformation had already been spread.

Seasoned NFL reporters and even the guy who invented the new kind of kickoff were getting mixed up.

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Granted, it does not help that the NFL has a way of making a terribly complicated rulebook. That opens avenues for human errors that trickle their way into Google's results.

But do you know what else is complicated and ripe for human errors and fabrication? Politics. International conflict. Climate change. What happens when the familiar muscle memory of Googling can no longer be trusted?

As Mashable has covered in detail, Google search has run into numerous problems lately. The internet is flooded with low-quality content looking to answer common search queries. Court documents and reporting have suggested that perhaps Google has become more focused on ad dollars than reliable search results. And, let's not forget, AI search overview's rollout got a pretty disastrous response from the public. In total, it stands to reason that folks should double check anything they Google.

So yes, the rules of an NFL game aren't terribly important in the grand scheme of things. But the ease with which bad information can spread via Google is much bigger than anything that happened between the Bucs and Ravens.

Only Murders in the Building is a delight on many levels, from the joys of comedic cozy crime, to the thrill of playing along in trying to crack the case, to reveling in the incredible chemistry of its amateur sleuths. But one of the biggest joys is watching longtime friends and colleagues Martin Short and Steve Martin mercilessly mock each other in character and on the press tour.

As rough as Oliver and Charles (or Short and Martin) are on each other, you can feel the deep bond of brotherhood that's spanned decades all the way back to the 1986 comedy gem The Three Amigos. And in the latest episode of Only Murders, they pulled from a real-life staple of their friendship for an emotional moment. 

Charles and Oliver fight and make up in a very Steve and Martin way. Credit: Hulu

In Season 4 episode 9, "Escape from Planet Klongo," Charles and Oliver get into a very public fight on the set of the latest Ron Howard movie. Pushed to the brink by Oliver's demands for a top-notch bachelor party, Charles unloads on him, calling him "insufferable" — while both are dressed in mo-cap suits before a squad of background actors and production crew. Shortly thereafter, however, Charles apologizes and the two go for lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Red Dragon Palace. 

"You know we're going to be friends to the end," Oliver offers once they're seated. Charles can't handle the emotional honesty, so the pair hide behind their menus while they dive into this vulnerable heart-to-heart. As Oliver reassures Charles that they are friends for life, he says assuringly, "We can get colonoscopies together."

That right there is a thing Martin and Short (or Steve and Martin) do together in real life. 

Martin Short and Steve Martin throw colonoscopy parties together.  Credit: Hulu

In Short's charming 2014 autobiography, I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend, Short detailed this tradition, which happens every other year. He, Martin, Tom Hanks (who also gets mentioned in this ep), and producer Walter Parks get together for a purposeful slumber party at Steve Martin's home. They spend the night playing poker, eating Jell-O and broth, and spending ample time in the bathroom cleansing their systems for the exam, which is scheduled for the following day. In the book, Short clarifies they are not in the same room when the exam happens. But they all drive together to their synced appointments and go out for lunch and margaritas afterward. 

In 2018, Martin and Short talked about this on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Short said the one downside of this bonding experience is Martin's home only has one bathroom. "By 10 p.m. the bathroom looks like day 14 of a Carnival Cruise."

If you're thinking this sounds familiar, but you somehow missed Martin's autobiography, the Kimmel appearance, and the waves both made online, maybe you saw "Join the Club," the episode of Max's Hacks in which fictional comedienne Deborah Vance is invited to a colonoscopy party of older male comics, whom she greatly admires (or envies). That does seem to be a point of inspiration for the show, though perhaps the concept has caught on among older comedians looking to be health-conscious and supportive through all kinds of shit (literally). 

This is all to say that this bit of dialogue about colonoscopies in Only Murders of the Building isn't an idle punchline. It harkens back to a real thing in the enduring friendship between two legendary comedians, whose bond translates beautifully onscreen still. Who needs friendship bracelets?

Only Murders in the Building Season 4 is now streaming on Hulu, with a new episode every Tuesday.