Today is World Emoji Day, a totally made-up holiday invented by Jeremy Burge, founder of Emojipedia, to celebrate everything emoji.
Burge chose July 17 because it’s the date used on the calendar emoji 📅 , and it’s morphed into quite the phenomenon, with real-world events, social media postings, and even emoji-related product launches. Kim Kardashian, for example, launched her Kimoji fragrance line on World Emoji Day in 2018.
This year, Apple used the date to bring up the launch of a new "Emoji Game" on Apple News+, which was originally slated to debut in the fall with iOS 26. It’s available now on iOS 18.4 and later for News+ subscribers.
To play, you must complete words with blank spaces by dragging the correct emoji from a selection below.
I played it, and its kinda fun. The key is decoding the meaning of the presented emojis. What does 😴💭 mean, for example? (Spoiler alert if you intend to play today’s puzzle: it means ‘dream’! Yeah, I didn’t get it!)
The game joins a growing list of daily puzzles available in the News+ app, and is a strategy adopted by other publishers like the New York Times to keep readers coming back. It includes some clever wrinkles and social sharing tricks — read about it here.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Emojis aren’t just for fun. A new scientific study finds they can boost the quality of your relationships — yes, really.
Here’s how to wrangle PDFs, courtesy of the comprehensive but easy-to-use PDF Editor ,PDF Book Reader ® app.
ChatGPT’s just released an exclusive feature for Mac users: an AI meeting assistant that does a bunch of useful things.
This is a pretty whopping discount on the already inexpensive Apple Watch SE — a great smartwatch for getting started or tracking kids.
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
A message from PDF Editor ,PDF Book Reader ®
A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
Tweets of the day
Wallpaper of the day
One more thing ...
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
Today’s poll
Are you an emoji ninja?
Results from yesterday’s poll: Durability of repairability?
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