If you ask me, too few briny toppings make their way aboard our precious pizza pies. Only olives are accepted enough that they regular appear as a menu choice (anchovies too, though they seem to be as, er, widely appreciated, though increasingly, many chains will deign to allow you to add tangy yellow peppers to your order.

But I think there’s an even more approachable topping out there that can supply pizza with the much needed balance of olives and anchovies while contributing a bit more textural interest. It’s pickles. It was always pickles.

Why pizza is ripe for pickles

In my mind, a pizza is comparable to a hot dog. (My mind is a strange place, I know.) Both dishes are salty and fatty, and can accommodate a wide range of toppings, but while many people feel free to get adventurous with their hot dog garnishes, daring pizza is less omnipresent.

A plain pizza has crust, tomato sauce, and cheese, but that’s barely scratching the surface. Typical toppings might be a smattering of veggies, or sausage, pepperoni, meatballs, or all of the above. Other pies might have a rich white sauce instead of a tomato-based one, taking away the one balancing acidic ingredient there is. Between the cheeses and meats alone, it’s just more salt and more fat. That is delicious, to be sure, but is it balanced? Not so much. This is where pickles can shine—and before you flee this website in terror, allow me to point out that I’m hardly the only person to have had this idea. Pickle pizza even briefly went viral on TikTok last year.

Bring on the brine

It’s no secret that I love pickles. They happen to be the perfect zingy match for a lot of rich foods, and I eat a lot of rich foods. The reason they pair so brilliantly with salt and fat is because they’re imbued with bright, tangy brine. That acid provides your palate with something to look forward to amid the heavier flavors. It’s a brief, juicy switch that keeps the pizza interesting, so it doesn’t slowly grow flavorless after the first slice. 

Pickles make it snappy

The less obvious joy that pickles bring to pizza is texture. While most pizza toppings are soft and mushy, pickles, even when cooked, will almost always retain some crunch, and a change in consistency is also what makes a dish interesting and pleasurable to eat. That’s why celebrity chefs are always commenting on the “crunchy element,” or the “crunch factor” on this or that food challenge show. It’s a predictable comment, but it’s a real factor worth considering. A smattering of crunchy pickles will certainly impress the judge. (The judge is you.)

Explore the pickle universe

I’m not just talking about pickled cucumbers. There are so many pickles in this world, and you can explore them all on your pizza pie. Try pickled red onions, spicy mango pickles, kimchi, giardiniera, or pickled lemons. For starters, you can certainly pop open a jar of your favorite bread and butter pickles, cornichons, or half-sour dills. 

Depending on the type of pickle you’re using, you can chop them into bite-sized pieces or leave them whole, and scatter them over scratch-made pizzas or ready-to-bake frozen pies. I pre-slice my frozen pizzas now, so I only bake as many slices as I need. Today, I cut some thick slices of Grillo’s half-sours and sat them right atop my slices, with a little extra cheese to lock them down. (Here’s a pickle lover’s tip: You can spoon a tiny bit of the brine over the pizza for an extra kick.) Bake the pizza as usual, and dig in. Before you leave me an angry comment, consider: You already love pickles on cheeseburgers and fried chicken sandwiches. It’s time to put them on your pizza.

St. Charles, Minnesota, February 1, 2024 – Today, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited St. Charles, Minnesota, where he highlighted the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to lower energy costs, generate new income and create jobs in rural communities. These investments – combined with historic funding for rural America under President Biden’s Investing in America agenda – ensure that rural Americans have the fullest opportunity to find success in their hometowns.

It’s a good time to upgrade your laptop: Apple’s newest and most portable machine, the M2 MacBook Air, is currently on sale for its lowest price ever. Right now. you can get a 15-inch model for $999 (down from $1,299) from Best Buy, a $300 discount. After looking at price compression tools, I can say this is the lowest price it has reached since its release last summer, even better than October Prime Day and Black Friday prices.

While arguably the best ultraportable Apple laptop, the M2 MacBook Air isn’t necessarily the right choice for everyone, as Lifehacker Senior Technology Editor Jake Peterson noted in his review of the machine. It’s essentially a bigger version of the 13-inch MacBook Air, and a great buy provided you truly need that extra screen real estate. As Jake noted:

It sports the same design language, an M2 chip with an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU with up to 24GB of memory, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (which does seem a bit low on a 15-inch machine), a MagSafe charging port, a 1080p webcam, and a display supporting a P3 color gamut with up to 500 nits of brightness. It even has the same 18-hour battery life claim, thanks to a larger battery driving the larger display.

The Air only comes with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, about as low of a memory and storage spec as you’ll find in a 2023 computer. Again, that might be just fine for your use: M2 is powerful, after all, and its design means you can do a lot with a small amount of RAM. But someday, 8GB of RAM isn’t going to cut it, and you won’t be able to upgrade the memory yourself. The same goes for storage: If you live your entire life in the cloud, 256GB might be plenty. But if you save any photos, videos, or other large files on your Mac, you’re going to eventually need to spring for an external drive perpetually attached to your computer, or else deal with constant storage management until you sell the computer.

The limitations of the M2 MacBook Air are clear: the RAM and storage aren’t as good as they could be. The good news is that the upgraded version with 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage is also $300 off, and currently $1,399 (originally $1,699), making the upgrade to a beefier version of this laptop less painful.

Rumors suggest the reason the MacBook Air and the iPad Air are seeing their best discounts right now is because Apple plans to launch a new batch of iPad Airs and MacBook Airs in March. The latter are expected to include Apple’s new M3 chip in both the 13- and 15-inch models. If you’re always looking for the latest Apple products, it might be worth waiting. Otherwise, right now is a great time to take advantage of a good-for-Apple discount. If you’re looking for a great Apple deal, you’re unlikely to find a better one any time soon.

If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for February 1, 2024 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is medium-easy; I got it in four. Beware, there are spoilers below for February 1, Wordle #957! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Wordle game.

How to play Wordle

Wordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.

Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if they’re correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isn’t in the day’s secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)

Ready for the hints? Let’s go!

Does today’s Wordle have any unusual letters?

We’ll define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters’ phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it “Edwin Shirdloo,” like a name, and pretend he’s a friend of yours.)

They’re almost all common letters today! Four of them are in our mnemonic—only the fifth is a bit unusual. 

Can you give me a hint for today’s Wordle?

You aren’t dead. 

Does today’s Wordle have any double or repeated letters?

There are no repeated letters in today’s puzzle.

How many vowels are in today’s Wordle?

There are three vowels today. 

What letter does today’s Wordle start with?

Today’s word starts with A. 

What letter does today’s Wordle end with?

Today’s word ends with E.

What is the solution to today’s Wordle?

Ready? Today’s word is ALIVE.

How I solved today’s Wordle

TRACE gave me two of my vowels, and SHAME eliminated several other common consonants. I tried ABODE to test a third vowel. With the correct first and last letter and the likelihood of I as an additional vowel, I took a lucky guess on ALIVE.   

Wordle 957 4/6

⬛⬛🟨⬛🟩
⬛⬛🟨⬛🟩
🟩⬛⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

A primer on Wordle basics

The idea of Wordle is to guess the day’s secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, you’ll see an empty grid of letters. It’s up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word. 

Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word: 

• Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and it’s in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)

• Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)

• Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)

With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then it’s game over.

The best starter words for Wordle

What should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, that’s still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isn’t a single “best” starting word, but the New York Times’s Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:

• CRANE

• TRACE

• SLANT

• CRATE

• CARTE

Meanwhile, an MIT analysis found that you’ll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:

• SALET

• REAST

• TRACE

• CRATE

• SLATE

Other good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that it’s better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.

How to win at Wordle

We have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if you’re a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.

The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, don’t waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.

One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldn’t have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.

Wordle alternatives

If you can’t get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:

• Wheeldle, which lets you play one puzzle after another

• Dordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.

• Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.

• Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.

• Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.

Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the day’s solution. You’re required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.

Applying for jobs sucks bad. It always has, but somehow, it’s worse these days. It might be easier than ever to send out a resume, but it’s increasingly difficult to know what the hiring managers want. Even knowing what to include in your resume is hard, to say nothing of the waiting game, (lack of) follow-up emails, and the interview process. Let’s start at the beginning. Here’s what your resume should include these days, according to an expert. 

Your skills are key on a resume

Yes, you need to include past jobs and where you went to school, but a resume should be about you and the specific value you bring to the table. Instead of listing off the job duties your past jobs included, spend some time brainstorming ways the things you did apply to what you’re trying to do now. 

“If you want to discuss your previous experience at a restaurant job and how it can translate to a managerial position, talk about how you demonstrated great management skills by managing a number of tables at the same time,” says LinkedIn Career Expert Andrew McCaskill. “Or how you fine tuned your communication skills through interacting with customers and coworkers. Or how you demonstrated leadership and teamwork when acting as a shift lead, by delegating tasks and communicating messages effectively to different groups.”

McCaskill says “transferable people skills” are in high demand right now, so spend some time going through your old roles to figure out how you can highlight those. If you’re struggling to figure out what other “skills” your past experience has given you, check out this list for inspiration. You can highlight soft skills like leadership, communication, and problem-solving, or hard skills like project management, data analysis, or SEO proficiency.

Consider crafting a functional resume for maximum focus on skills, too. A functional resume leads with your skills, not your job experience, and is ideal for showing off what you’re prepared to do for your new bosses, not just what you’ve done for the old ones. It’s especially helpful if you’re trying to move from one industry to another or are struggling to find ways to link your past experience to the job duties you’re trying to get.

Use an action-first approach on your resume

The language you use to demonstrate all those skills is almost as important as the skills themselves, so your resume overhaul should include a little editing, too. McCaskill cautions against using passive terms, swapping them out for actions “to more powerfully convey how you contributed in your previous roles.” 

OUT: “I was responsible for…,” “My duties included…”

IN: “I improved…,” “I increased…,” “I developed…,” etc. 

Make sure you follow those up with evidence. If company sales increased 11% year-over-year when you started on the marketing team, say that. Be specific. Own it, basically. Per McCaskill, this not only helps employers see how you could contribute to their organization, but shows that you’re confident in your skills and experience. Think of this like using examples to tell a story about who and what kind of worker you are. A less effective resume acknowledges that you have been an employee before, sure, but a better resume demonstrates what kind of employee you’ve been and could be at the new place. 

If you’re concerned you don’t have space for these more in-depth explanations of your talents, look over what you have on the resume that could be deleted. Your GPA, college courses taken, address, and more are pretty useless unless you are a fresh graduate with little experience to point to (in which case you should try the functional resume format mentioned above). There might have been a time when those were helpful, but it’s over now. It’s 2024 and, according to McCaskill, skills rule. Focus on those, not the details of your college years.

Tailor the resume to the job

This is going to be annoying, but it is a necessary evil. In the same way you tailor your cover letter to the specific job you want, you should do the same with resumes. No more sending the same boring old work history to every single company. 

“Be sure to read through the descriptions of roles you’re interested in, and then align your skills as closely as you can to what’s mentioned in the job posting,” says McCaskill. “Storytelling and demonstrating the impact of these skills will show hiring managers that you have what they’re looking for and can bring immediate value to their organization.” 

If a job posting says the company is looking for someone with leadership skills, point out leadership roles you’ve played in the past. If it says they want a team player, you might have to alter the skills you highlight from that same past job to better demonstrate your ability to work with others. The trick is to tailor the resume so it addresses exactly what the job posting says the company is looking for, putting your corresponding skills at the forefront. 

If you’ve bought a new iPhone like the iPhone 15 Pro Max or a new pair of Apple headphones or earbuds in the past year or two, then you’ve probably heard the sales pitch about spatial audio. But what exactly is spatial audio, how do you use it, and do you really need it? If you’ve been looking for the answers to these questions, then look no further.

What is spatial audio?

Spatial audio first started appearing on the original AirPods Pro and AirPods Max as a way to make your movies and videos more immersive. Now, though, Apple and others have extended spatial audio content to other apps, including Apple Music. At its root, spatial audio is how Apple brands its approach to immersive 360-degree audio. Apple isn’t the only one to refer to the tech as spatial audio, so it can get a little confusing when you hear it in other places. But the basic idea is still the same.

If you’re thinking, “this just sounds like regular old surround sound,” then you wouldn’t be wrong. At its core, that’s all spatial audio is. However, with the tech that Apple has been putting in the newest AirPods Pro and AirPods Max in recent years, it offers a bit more than that, allowing you to actually have an anchor in place for sounds so that you can move around and actually experience 3D audio instead of having the sounds surround you.

How does spatial audio work?

While some content will act just like regular surround sound, providing you with different levels of sound for different effects depending on which direction they are coming from, spatial audio can also use your smart device as an anchor and then create a virtual 3D environment that is meant to make you feel like you’re directly within the sounds that you’re listening to.

As such, some content that has full spatial audio support will allow you to turn your head and change where the sound is coming from. For example, imagine you’re watching an action movie, and you hear yelling and running off to the right. Well, with spatial audio on, you could turn your head to the right and the direction of the sound would change from being off to your right to being in front of you.

This creates an immersive experience that mimics 3D surround sound, allowing you to turn your head and listen as the audio moves to the left, right, or up and down, depending on how you move your head. We’ve also seen this tech utilized in Dolby Atmos, which is what Apple’s spatial audio is built on.

In some headphones, like the newest AirPods, this movement is tied to sensors and gyros in the headphones themselves. Others rely on a completely virtual system to pull off the 3D audio. It’s likely we’ll see more headphones and earbuds launching with full gyros in the future to provide an even more immersive listening experience.

What Apple devices support spatial audio?

If you want to experience spatial audio for yourself, there are a myriad of Apple devices that support the system: The AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, AirPods 3rd Generation, and Beats Fit Pro. Apple also says that any devices running iOS 15.1 or later will be able to play spatial audio through their integrated speakers, including the HomePod 2, iPhone 7 or later, and the following iPads:

• iPad mini 5th generation and later

• iPad 6th generation and later

• iPad Pro 12.9‑inch 3rd generation and later

• iPad Pro 11‑inch, iPad Air 3rd generation and later

What apps support spatial audio?

It’s about more than just having the right hardware, though. You’ll also need apps that have content with spatial audio. Luckily there are more than a few, including Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV Plus, HBO Max, Disney Plus, and Apple Music. Other apps like Tidal and Amazon Music HD provide Dolby Atmos support, too, but they have it tied to their own speaker systems. In Tidal’s case, it’s tied to Sony’s 360 Reality Audio, so you can’t use it with your Apple headphones.

YouTube also supports two different spatial audio formats. However, keep in mind that any content through these other apps will have to offer Dolby Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 to actually use spatial audio.

How to turn spatial audio on in Apple Music

For Apple and Beats headphones, spatial audio support will be turned on automatically. However, you can turn it on all the time for other supported headphones by heading into Apple Music’s app settings and turning on the Dolby Atmos setting. To do this, navigate to Settings > Music > Dolby Atmos and tick it to Always On.

Is spatial audio worth the hype?

Ultimately, spatial audio is a really cool feature that makes audio more immersive. It isn’t a dealbreaker, though, and if you already have a working pair of headphones or earbuds, I wouldn’t say it’s especially worth upgrading to a new pair for just that. Once more services support it, though, spatial audio will become one of the best ways to watch movies, listen to music, and enjoy a plethora of other types of audio content.

I’ve always been sure there were easier ways to get the laundry done. While it’s not the head-to-tail solution I dream of wherein I throw my clothes to the floor at the end of the day and they magically regenerate clean and on hangers in my closet the next, the latest iteration of smart washing machines from LG do alleviate a surprising number of pain points.  I tested the Smart Washer with TurboWash® 360° and AI DD® Built-In Intelligence (currently $999, regularly $1299), and its mate, the Smart Electric Dryer with Sensor Dry & Steam Technology (currently $899, regularly $1199). That’s a mouthful, but the important part is that these new models use the LG ThinkQ technology as well as AI DD® Built-In Intelligence.  

Well-designed machines

Though most people tuck their washing machines away, you won’t need to do that with this pair. They have sleek, beautifully simple faces on the brushed metal frame. When off, you see the interface as a simple round dial with a black face, and a minimized drawer for the detergent bay on the washer. There are no rounded corners on the machine, everything is sharp mitered edges intersecting circles for the doors and dials. These machines are on the taller side, each standing almost 40 inches tall. Once stacked, they’re tall enough you might strain to reach the top dial. If you’re shorter, one benefit of the connectivity of these machines is that, through the app, you can ask the machines to ignore the dial on the dryer, and use the washing machine controls for both machines. When on, the digital interface uses contemporary fonts, colors, and even seasonal pictures in a pretty high resolution. Turning the dial or pressing a button brings the machines to life; otherwise, there are no lights to bother you. Rather than buzzing when a cycle is complete, the machines offer a selection of classical tunes. Once a month or so, you’re sent new tunes and graphics to choose from. For winter, I had an animated snowman greet me and play Vivaldi’s “Winter.” While I expected to be bothered by the noise and overall cheeriness, instead I was kind of delighted by a washing machine set that seemed to interact with me. 

ThinkQ makes controlling your machines from the couch possible (mostly)

The machines pair seamlessly with ThinkQ, LG’s smart appliance app. It immediately picked up the machines and connected and led me through a two-minute setup. The app will prompt you to remotely turn the machines on and off, and configure your wash or dry cycle and then send that cycle to the machine. What it won’t do is allow you to remotely start the machine, even if the door is closed. You can activate “remote start” for each machine, which would allow you to do so, from the physical control panel, but remote start isn’t a perpetual state: You have to deactivate it to open the door after a cycle, and reactivate if after. Essentially, this means you have to go up to the machines to turn on remote start; once there, you might as well just start the damn thing. This is probably a safety feature, but I wish i could sign a disclaimer that I have neither cats nor children who’d climb inside my machine. My main complaint with the app—and it’s not a deal breaker by any stretch—is that although LG integrates with Google Home and other smart assistants, it doesn’t do so in any way that is particularly helpful. If you’d like to use your machines in automations, you can’t. At most, you’ll see the machines in your smart home dashboard, and that they’re on or off. 

A much more efficient process

Remote start aside, streamlined UX is at the heart of these machines, and where it’s clear LG has worked to try and make laundry as painless as possible. This starts with the detergent: Instead of adding pods and sheets or softener to every load, the detergent bay holds about a quart of detergent and softener, and will dispense it automatically. So far, I’ve only had to refill it every few weeks and it’s meant being able to store my drippy bottles away and eliminate use of dryer sheets altogether. There isn’t a reservoir for bleach, which would have made it a perfect trifecta. Once you place laundry in the machine, you can configure a wash and dry to the usual specifications regarding heat, length, level of agitation, dry time, etc, or you can simply activate AI wash, where it simply figures it out for you. While the dryer has occasionally required a little more time, the AI wash has done an admirable job of sensing the load and treating it appropriately. All of this translates to tossing laundry in, hitting one button and walking away.

Reminders that aren’t judgmental

Where these machines really shine is when the cycle is over. I have never been a person who consistently moves the laundry as soon as it’s done. I know there are people who, like me, forget about their laundry or ignore it until they need to run another wash. If this is you, LG has you covered on two fronts. First, the app will, after a period of time, send you a non-accusatory or shame-y reminder that clothes don’t benefit from this kind of prolonged wait time, and will continue to remind you. They also offer you the ability to activate KeepFresh, which essentially tosses the laundry around occasionally to, yes, keep it fresh, until you get back to it. KeepFresh works in both the washer and dryer, so your clothes don’t get deeply wrinkled while you wait for motivation. All of that said, KeepFresh doesn’t keep going forever, and I missed the quick rinse option that previous machines had. At best, LG has a quick wash, but it is an entire cycle, rather than a short rinse. This was how I previously had solved the problem of leaving laundry in the washer too long.

Steam cycle is one of the best features

In case you do get wrinkles, one of the most fantastic features of this dryer is the steam cycle. I was blown away with how effective it is. If you’re someone who has uses the dryer to get out wrinkles rather than iron, you are going to love this functionality.  As a test, I used the most wrinkle-prone laundry I could find—thin cotton cloth napkins, tablecloths and sheets. Ten minutes in a steam cycle and they looked pressed, with no curling corners or creases.

Where smart appliances could go next

I have almost no complaints about these machines—they cleaned very effectively, held an accurate amount of laundry for their size, and efficiently completed washing cycles. Mostly, they made me think about ways smart washing machines could get smarter.  At CES this year, Eureka introduced a wash tower where a robot vacuum was integrated into the footprint. At the same time, we’re seeing a new fleet of robot vacuum/mop combos that you actually pipe into your water line so they can fill and empty themselves. The next leap in smartness for these machines might be how they work with other home appliances, and even how they can use that AI to ensure the water from all these devices are safe and offload the gray water to house plants.

Bottom line: it doesn’t cost much more to get a smarter machine

These machines are not dramatically more expensive than machines without connectivity or AI. Do you need any of these features? No. You don’t even need a washing machine—people got by before they existed. But I, for one, welcome every single tiny iteration that makes our lives easier.