Thank you, second row, for pulling some fantastic letters out of the bag and making it easy to find today's answer. I really couldn't have done it if I hadn't had those letters arranged in that way. I don't think this particular word would have come to mind otherwise. Don't worry if that sounds a bit daunting—you've got our clue (and answer) to help you win. 

Today's Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Tuesday, August 27

Today's winning Wordle word is the name used to describe regal headwear, the sort of jewel-encrusted accessory that would show the world someone was in charge and fabulously wealthy. There's only a single vowel today.  

Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

No, there is not a double letter in today's puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

Looking to extend your Wordle winning streak? Perhaps you've just started playing the popular daily puzzle game and are looking for some pointers. Whatever the reason you're here, these quick tips can help push you in the right direction: 

• Start with a word that has a mix of common vowels and consonants. 
• The answer might repeat the same letter.
• Try not to use guesses that include letters you've already eliminated. 

There's no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don't need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares. 

Today's Wordle answer

What is today's Wordle answer?

Enjoy your latest win. The answer to the August 27 (1165) Wordle is CROWN.

Previous Wordle answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Wordle solutions that have already been used can help eliminate answers for today's Wordle or give you inspiration for guesses to help uncover more of those greens. They can also give you some inspired ideas for starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh.

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

• August 26: STAKE
• August 25: SKATE
• August 24: FILET
• August 23: LEECH
• August 22: BRUTE
• August 21: MULCH
• August 20: DELAY
• August 19: METER
• August 18: LANKY
• August 17: STORM

Learn more about Wordle 

Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it's up to you to work out which five-letter word is hiding among them to win the popular daily puzzle.

It's usually a good plan to start with a strong word like ALERT—or any other word with a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels—and you should be off to a flying start, with a little luck anyway. You should also avoid starting words with repeating letters, so you don't waste the chance to confirm or eliminate an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you'll see which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you've got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you might have missed on the first row—just don't forget to leave out any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. After that, it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the correct word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words and don't forget letters can repeat too (eg: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 

What is the Star Wars Outlaws release date?

The Star Wars Outlaws release date is Friday, August 30, 2024. You'll see players who pre-ordered the game jumping in a few days prior for "early access," as detailed below.

When is early access for Star Wars Outlaws?

Early access for Star Wars Outlaws begins on Tuesday, August 27, exactly three days before the main launch. Players who have pre-ordered the Gold Edition or Ultimate Edition of Star Wars Outlaws can begin playing at that time. The exact launch times for early access are the same as the times below for the main launch, just taking place on August 26/27 depending on your time zone.

When is the release time for Star Wars Outlaws?

Star Wars Outlaws launches at 12 am August 30, 2024. Sort of. It's a slightly unusual rollout for PC players. Often games will have a midnight launch on console but then pick one single global launch time on PC. For Star Wars Outlaws, the console players do all have a 12 am local time launch but for PC there are a few distinct launch times grouped by region. Here's how that breaks down around the world:

Asia and the Pacific

• 12 am, August 30 AEST (Sydney)
• 11 pm, August 29 JST (Tokyo)
• 11 pm, August 29 KST (Seoul)
• 10 pm, August 29 CST (Shanghai)

Europe and Africa

• 2 am, August 30 GST (Abu Dhabi)
• 1 am, August 30 EEST (Kyiv)
• 12 am, August 30 CEST (Paris)
• 11 pm, August 29 BST (London)

Americas

• 1 am, August 30 BRT (São Paulo)
• 12 am, August 29 EST (New York)
• 10 pm, August 29 CST (Mexico City)
• 9 pm, August 29 PST (Los Angeles)

That means players in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific islands will be playing first at 2 pm UTC on August 29. Preloading for PC players begins on Monday, August 26 at 10 am UTC (11 am BST / 6 am EST).

When the Olympics were on TV, showing off countless extraordinary feats of human athleticism, and the warm summer sun was shining over grassy playing fields up and down the country, it was almost as if the universe itself was trying to encourage me to play some sports. Good luck with that; I have a body built for typing and the pallid skin of a blind cave fish whose entire species hasn't seen light for millennia. But in the spirit of the season, I was prepared to meet reality halfway and do the Olympics, or at least some nascent digital version of them, my way, with Konami's '84-'85 Hyper Sports trilogy of MSX PC games. If I can use games to impersonate a tough mech pilot, a powerful samurai, or pretend I'm a vampire elf's walking juice box, then surely acting like I could bounce off a springboard at high speed without twisting an ankle at a medically terrifying angle wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

I wasn't expecting much more from the games beyond half an hour's worth of fun, if I'm honest. Sports games, especially ones as old as these, are best known for being entertainingly shallow button-destroying collections of middling minigames and not much else. Waggle a joystick to sprint. Waggle the joystick to swim. Mash the keyboard to jump really high. Mash the keyboard to jump really high, but this time the background's blue instead of green. Not exactly gold medal-winning experiences. 

Japan's MSX wasn't considered an especially high powered computer even in the mid-1980s, so authentically capturing the complexity of gymnastics movement, the fine skill of archery, or the frenzied brushing of curling, was surely out of the question. Professional sports are highly skilled events where years of intense training, mental focus, and physical effort combine in a few intense, life-changing seconds into something new and wonderful. The MSX thought being able to display 16 colours at once (and at most) was all anyone would need, and having a dedicated digital controller to play games with was a nice optional extra.

So how was I suddenly obsessed with Hyper Sports 1's opening diving event, determined to perfect my double somersault plunge into the water and finally prove the one judge who dared to give me a progress-ruining 6/10 wrong?

OK—I'll admit that part of the reason for that was down to all three games insisting I play through their handfuls of events in a strictly linear order, with no skips or continues. Absolutely no weight lifting for me unless I learned how to clear skeet shooting first, no long horse or bouncy trampoline fun without nailing this dive. No matter the sport the pass requirements are always high, demanding true understanding and mastery of each event before allowing me to move on to the next one.

But mostly I kept playing because I was having a lot of fun. Even this simple starter event demanded a lot from me, and I wanted to get it right. The initial leap off the board was crucial to my success, my nameless athlete in tight white swimming trunks performing three jumps before leaping into the water. If I could hit the spacebar at just the right time, every time, they'd bounce higher and higher into the air, which would give me more time for the next part—the somersaults. The more of those I could squeeze in, the higher the score I'd receive, and to do that I needed to get a lot of air and then hammer the right cursor key on my keyboard fast enough to make me wonder if there was still someone at Konami I could bill for wear and tear.

Mindless tapping wasn't enough, either, as belly-flopping into the water would tank my score. So I needed to spin as much as possible, but never so much I didn't leave myself time to hit the spacebar again just before the end, straightening my diver out and ensuring a graceful, and hopefully high-scoring, finish to my aquatic athletics.

No matter what I was doing, from the triple jump to the trampoline, I was enthralled, over and over again, by a sports game two or three times older than most of the Paris 2024 Games' living athletes. The second game's archery competition was another favourite, testing my ability to time my actions in two different ways at the same time.

At the most basic level I was firing an arrow at a slowly moving target, and I needed to take the randomised wind speed into account. But the length of time I held the fire button also mattered, as this determined the angle of the shot. If I held on just a fraction too long, or not quite long enough, then the arrow could miss the points-rich centre of the board, or maybe even miss the board entirely. There was no game-y magic formula to getting it artificially right every time. I just had to be quick, consistent, and put in the practice.

Of course nothing found in any of these games is an accurate representation of the real events—executing sick triple somersaults 30 feet up in the air is sadly not achievable by a complete amateur in seconds just by jabbing a single cursor key at switch-breaking speeds, and professional cycling probably involves a bit more thought than going really fast all the time and making sure the other person can't get in front of me. But in the moment this trio of tiny games from decades ago feel close enough to the real thing for the lines between the two to become just a little blurred. My reflexes, physical stamina, and knowledge of the nuances of each discipline are tested, and I won't get anywhere unless I put in the effort.

And just like real sports, I want to put in that effort, even though it's hard and the path to perfection is long. I'm better at these events than I was yesterday, but not as good as I'll be tomorrow. My keyboard isn't going to last until the next Olympics, but my enthusiasm for these games definitely will.

Okay, it's not really "some quarters" so much as it is this one guy, but he's putting enough effort into it to count for at least three or four guys:

"I AM NOT LAUGHING AND THIS IS NOT A JOKE," 3DGlyptics tweeted in response to someone who said the complaint was funny—and for the record we don't normally do all-caps quotations, but I'm rolling with it here because, well, it's funny. "VALVE SOFTWARE IS ACTIVELY VIOLATING THEIR OWN RULES - STORE PAGE SUBMISSIONS REQUIRE A MINIMUM OF 5 SCREENSHOTS - REVIEW PROCESS HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY BYPASSED - I AM NOT LAUGHING."

I am laughing, frankly, but the complaint is actually legit: The Steamworks documentation states plain as day that developers "must provide at least five screenshots of your product" on Steam store pages. The Deadlock Steam page has no screens at all, just a single, 22-second teaser—a clear violation of Valve's own rules.

Now, you might be saying to yourself that Valve can get away with this because, obviously, Valve owns Steam and so it can do whatever the hell it wants. But 3DGlyptics is already ahead of you on that one, arguing that Valve has been established by precedent as a Steamworks Partner, and is thus subject to the Steamworks rules. That novel argument arises from a March 2024 sale on The Orange Box, during which Valve added a "winner of over 100 awards" sticker to the header art on its Steam page.

This too is against Valve's rules for Steam, which forbids review scores, award names, and "discount marketing copy" on graphical asset capsules. And in this case, Valve employee Tom Giardino copped to the mistake and Valve fixed it quickly, ensuring that it was in full compliance with the rules.

What's great here is that 3DGlyptics is at least technically correct, which as we all know is the best kind of correct: Valve, having previously indicated that it is subject to Steam's rules just like everyone else, is now blatantly ignoring Steam's rules. Can anything be done about it? Probably not. But even if Valve considers itself above the petty consideration of rules—bah!—we can all hold ourselves to a higher standard—much like 3DGlyptics is doing:

For the record, 3DGlyptics' in-the-works game BC Piezophile, a "first-person action horror game set deep underwater," looks intensely weird and possibly very cool: It doesn't have a release date yet but it's up for wishlisting now, and in full accordance with the rules, on Steam.

I've reached out to Valve for comment on Deadlock's blatant store page violations and will update if I receive a reply.

On the streamer front, Deadlock's already being championed by high-profile creators. Michael "Shroud" Grzsesiek, currently the 10th most-followed streamer on Twitch according to Socialblade, has been streaming Deadlock daily since its official unveiling. "This game is going to easily—and I mean easily—take over," Shroud said in a Twitch clip. Elsewhere, while enthusing about Deadlock's mechanical depth, Shroud called it "probably the best third person shooter I've ever played."

Sean "Day[9]" Plott, who you might've seen hosting our PC Gaming Show, says he's quietly fallen hard for Deadlock while playing in its elephant-in-the-room era. "I can finally say publicly that it's currently my favorite game to play," Day[9] tweeted after Valve lifted the restriction on Deadlock discussion, "and I generally dislike shooters because I'm awful at them." Esports players are showing a strong interest as well, like former Dota 2 International champion Dendi, who's logged over a dozen hours in Deadlock streams since Friday.

As with any hero-based game, history will judge Deadlock based on one criteria alone: the richness of its fanart. And once Valve sanctioned public Deadlock discussion, fanartists wasted no time sharing the work they've produced to celebrate their new favorite characters.

Also headlining a lot of fan conversation is Deadlock's in-game chat, which show's players messages emerging from their associated character portrait as though Deadlock's charismatic heroes have started communicating directly via shitpost. 

Deadlock even had its first cash-prize tournament over the weekend. Yesterday, eight teams competed in The Downtown Showdown, a community-organized tournament with a $1500 prize pool, all for a game that's still in an invite-only early testing phase.

Deadlock might be laying early foundations for a lively fan community, but only Valve knows how many years we might have to wait before its full release. Until then, if you want to try the MOBA for yourself, here's our guide for how to get into the Deadlock playtest. 

Banks first appeared as One Odd Gamer Girl in 2015, and quickly grew to become a well-known member of the disabled gamer community, according to IGN's report. In 2018, for instance, she was featured in an interview with leading videogame accessibility website AbleGamers; in 2019, following her reported death, the site paid tribute to Banks in "A Farewell to a Friend," calling her an "amazing ally" and "a brilliant light in the fight for accessibility."

But five years later, the IGN investigation has found no evidence that she was a real person. Quite the opposite, if anything. The report is deeply detailed, but one particularly damning claim comes from a source who hired a private investigator to confirm Banks' existence prior to her death. The investigator was unable to come up with anything demonstrating Banks was a real person: No immigration record (Banks was supposedly Turkish), employment record, address, birth certificate, or anything else was found.

In fact it seems that nobody had direct contact with Banks. The report says interviews and other interactions were conducted exclusively through email or Twitter DMs, facilitated by Craven. Steven Spohn, senior director of development at AbleGamers, confirmed he never directly spoke to Banks but said it didn't seem unusual at the time because many deaf people—Banks was reportedly deaf—prefer text-based communications over voice calls. 

That's not incriminating in its own right, and plenty of people (myself included) would rather send an email than make a phone call, disabled or not. But the IGN report says no one it spoke to for the story had ever seen or heard Banks by herself, "outside of her social media profile or with Craven."

The report details various other oddities related to Banks and Craven: In 2021, for instance, the Game Accessibility Conference presented the Susan Banks Advocacy Award for "an advocate using their voice to make a difference across the wider [videogame] industry." But a year later the International Game Developers Association received an email questioning whether Banks was in fact a real person; when Craven was told about it, he said the incident was impacting his mental health and merely asked that Banks' name be removed from the award, a position he maintained even after being offered legal support. The award was subsequently renamed to the Advocacy Award.

The full report goes very deep into the weeds, including coverage of two of Craven's subsequent romantic relationships, both of them also with accessibility advocates whose existence is in doubt. Craven wrote about the mother of one of those purported partners on Medium in 2023, claiming that his tutelage "ignited a love of games for a 96-year-old woman" named Bess; eight months later he announced on Twitter that Bess had died, but IGN was unable to find any record of the reported death.

Craven declined to comment on the IGN report, although he did apparently ask the site not to publish it at all. Since the report went live, he's deleted most of his social media accounts, as well as his personal website. The Can I Play That? website has also taken action, removing a reference to Banks and Craven as the site's founders on its "About" page. (The original can still be seen via the Wayback Machine.)

The whole situation is deeply weird, especially since as far as I can tell, the only motivation for this complex, persistent, nearly decade-long scam—if it is in fact a scam, which technically at least remains unproven—is clout. And I know people do a lot of wild shit for clout, but this? This is a lot. It's also a remarkable piece of investigative reporting—check it out in full at IGN. 

But just because a game is great doesn't mean there aren't ways to improve it. The moment it launched, modders began monkeying around with the monkey game's innards, and one mod has quickly risen to the top of the popularity pile—because it adds a map.

Simply called Simple Map, the mod gives you a big ol' map of the world, lets you open it fullscreen, change the camera view, zoom in and out, and scroll around. You can also tap a key to display nearby resources, and naturally your own location is shown with an icon as well. 

Full disclosure: I haven't played Black Myth: Wukong yet, or even watched someone else play it on a stream, so I can't really say if it's a game that cries out for a map or not. The mod has over 30,000 downloads, so "maybe" is about the only conclusion I can come to. In the interest of due diligence, however, I asked my coworkers who have played it whether or not a map is something that would benefit the game. Here's what they said.

Wesley "Wes" Fenlon: "Not having a map has definitely left me wondering if I've missed any significant side paths—even in the first stage, it's quite easy to skip over one of the first bosses (and major power-ups) you're supposed to get if you're in a hurry. The environments are very pretty, but not very interesting to navigate more than once because there's very little to actually interact with. That's discouraged me from going back and running through them multiple times without having a map to orient myself with."

Tyler "Tyler Colp" Colp: "A map would only be nice if it could help you track sidequests or secrets to return to because this game does have a bit of the souls thing where NPCs move around and you have to find them. Otherwise, you don't really need a map to get through each area because the paths don't fork in that many directions and you aren't getting sidetracked by some cave like in Elden Ring. I think a map might help people who are terrible at finding where, say, the next boss is, but I don't think it would make the game considerably better or anything."

There you have it. And in case you're wondering, the reason Tyler "Tyler Colp" Colp's nickname is "Tyler Colp" is because we have two Tylers at PC Gamer so we have to refer to them by their full names.

Uruc is being created by a first time developer, Stefan Haasbroek, who is also a progressive metal artist⁠—his most recent EP has about as prog metal a name as you can get: "Spectral Tardigrade Mole Station." It helps explain how the music in Uruc's trailer was so affecting, but also the whole thing has this inherent progginess that I'm really digging. That key art of the worm-fox basking in an open wasteland? Pretty proggy. Oh, it's about a little creature caught amidst war and horror beyond its ken? Are we talking about a game, or a concept album here.

PCG contributor Jon Bolding observed that "Somebody played Rain World too much and now it's everybody's problem," and you can definitely see the Rain World influence in the wee fox guy's distinctive shape, as well as the very particular horror of being an animal trapped in the ruins of a civilization it doesn't understand. But Uruc is giving me the vibe of a more traditional metroidvania⁠—at least going off what little material we have so far⁠—than Rain World's unique blend of survival elements.

I'm in love with the look and sound of Uruc, with anime-inspired mecha of the more Armored Core, "technology is dehumanizing" variety seemingly marooned on or assaulting (or both) an ancient, dead world whose blasted vistas and strange monuments remind me of the art of H.R. Geiger and Zdzisław Beksiński (or Scorn, a game heavily inspired by both artists).

True cosmic horror is being confronted with something beyond your powers of reason and deduction, like an ant exploring a circuit board, and it's a feeling few games have ever evoked in me. Uruc really seems like it has that secret sauce, and I'm eager to play it. The game currently has no release window or presence on Steam or itch.io, but Haasbroek is crowdfunding for the game via BackaBuddy, and you can also follow the developer on YouTube or Bandcamp.

Cool, thanks! Also, do you mind if modders immediately change everything about it?

You can probably guess at least one of the vehicles modders used to replace the vanilla Starfield buggy. Yep, it's the Warthog from Halo. Specifically, it's the M12B FAV (Force Application Vehicle), and although the mod looks pretty neat, I do notice one thing missing: a method for applying force. Doesn't the Warthog typically have a bigass chaingun or gauss cannon mounted on it? Ah, well. It's still a big improvement on the Rev-8.

The same modder, NotSiouxsie, has a few more vehicle mods, like the incredibly attractive Old Earth ATV mod that makes it look like you're driving a shiny blue Jeep with big chunky tires around on Starfield's planets. There's also this Crimson Gang van mod that may be even cooler, based on a 1992 Chevy van. You can also take the Saints Row's Stag N-Forcer for a spin, a vehicle I'm not personally familiar with but still think looks pretty cool. 

Far more exciting to me, this other mod turns the Rev-8 into the X-34 landspeeder, the dirty, clunky old hovering car Luke Skywalker used to get around on Tatooine in the original Star Wars. Though I see the modder has blasphemously put Han Solo and Chewbacca in the front seat instead of Luke and Ben Kenobi, it still looks dope, and it'll go great with any Star Wars-inspired ship builds you're playing with.

What, no Thomas the Tank Engine? Well, not quite yet. He's here, but at the moment he's untextured. I'm sure someone will give him a paint job soon. 

Red Thread Games (the studio behind Draugen and Dreamfall Chapters, headed by veteran videogame wordsmith Ragnar Tørnquist) might have bitten off a bit more than it can reasonably chew. All those disparate elements can grind awkwardly against each other in places, and the combat is undeniably stiff and janky, with sassy battle-chatter frequently interrupted or cut short. But somehow, Dustborn holds together well enough to be an enjoyable romp, thanks in large part to an unusual focus on the moments where you’re not doing very much at all.

Dustborn makes negative space a primary feature. It dedicates an uncommon amount of its (respectably beefy) play-time to just sitting down and talking through recent events with your crew. Lengthy after-action camping sequences divide episodes of adventure, and even during tense encounters characters will stop for a breather to talk through their feelings about the situation and each other. No gruff action-men conveying all their thoughts and feelings with a grunt and a nod here; superpowers aside, these are soft and fragile people with things to say, and the game gives them plenty of time to say it.

Talking heads

Negative space has always been an important part of games, especially when there's a lot of plot or game mechanics to digest. Our squishy, porous brain-meats need time to properly sort, collate and comprehend what they’ve been up to. Often, this just takes the form of busywork, be it long travel times or inventory shuffling. It gives the players room to breathe, but the cast are often expected to do a Hollywood walk-and-talk, ideally with the snappiest possible banter. Dustborn goes its own way and dedicates what feels like almost half its length to making these quiet segments memorable in their own way.

While many of these sequences can be tapped out of early or even skipped entirely, I feel that they’re the heart of the experience. Each camp-site or location to sit down is a bespoke environment, often featuring the characters in fresh outfits and new poses. As the characters occupy themselves with their own hobbies and obsessions, you get to wander around and listen to them chatting, or sit down for a one-on-one and see how they’re feeling.

What do you say to your party’s heavy-hitting but soft-hearted tank—one of the starting party—when she starts to feel sidelined by a growing roster of friends and allies? There’s no easy answers, because people are messy. This may be a game with boss fights against robots and long brawls with alt-history JFK’s jetpacking fascist police force, but for the most part, it’s a cozy, almost intimate time.

These quiet moments aren’t without mechanical value in Dustborn, either. Each of your crew have several named facets to their personality which can be encouraged or suppressed through dialogue choices. The game is keen to stress that none are explicitly good or bad—they're just different ways for the story to play out. Those personality profiles offer different dialogue during quieter moments, but they can also determine what options are available during adventure sequences. When stranded on a highway with no easy routes out, stealing a truck might be an option if you’ve encouraged your party engineer’s more pragmatic side. But if you’ve nurtured their idealistic streak, they might reject that plan, forcing a search for an alternative solution.

Fundamentally, it’s nothing new. Plenty of games have echoed the party member moments that BioWare made famous with Mass Effect and Dragon Age; the recent Baldur’s Gate 3 had its share of campsite conversations when your companions weren’t frantically trying to jump your bones. But Dustborn feels like a more extreme extrapolation, using the downtime to properly deconstruct and analyze itself through the lenses of its diverse and often disagreement-prone band of heroes. It’s not a trick that every game can pull off, and the indulgently long dialogues aren’t something that other mediums could easily manage.

It won't be Dustborn's clumsy combat sequences that'll see me through to its end. It'll be its characters, and the meandering conversations we share in the moments between.