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Today's puzzle mixes woodworking tools, melon varieties, garden hose settings, and "___ Girls" pop-culture names.
The yellow group is easy to spot, but the green and blue groups both lean on water, so players need to split them apart carefully.
The purple group comes together once you add "Girls" after each word.
Puzzle #1168 of NYT Connections went live on August 22, 2026, and it comes with a trap built around water. Four of the sixteen words seem to point toward the same idea, but they actually split across two separate groups.
The yellow group is the simplest. CHISEL, HAMMER, PLANE, and SAW are all basic carpentry tools. Most players will spot this one first.
The green and blue groups both lean on water, and that overlap is where guesses tend to go wrong. WATER does not belong with the hose settings. Instead, it joins BITTER, MUSK, and WINTER, since each word forms a type of melon when paired with the word "melon."
That leaves CONE, JET, MIST, and SHOWER for the blue group, all settings found on a garden hose nozzle. CONE is the one most players miss, since it does not sound as watery as the other three.
The purple category asks players to add "Girls" after each word. GILMORE becomes Gilmore Girls, GOLDEN becomes Golden Girls, MEAN becomes Mean Girls, and SPICE becomes Spice Girls, pulling together four different corners of pop culture.
Yellow: CHISEL, HAMMER, PLANE, SAW
Green: BITTER, MUSK, WATER, WINTER
Blue: CONE, JET, MIST, SHOWER
Purple: GILMORE, GOLDEN, MEAN, SPICE
Solvers who separate the melon words from the hose words early tend to clear the board without losing a guess.
