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The Green Group with Sports Equipment was the easiest - one set of sports items was simple enough to put players ahead.
The Wedding Attire Included Harder Terms - Familiar wedding pieces comprised the list with fashion terms unknown to test the players' cultural knowledge.
Rhyming Words Required Diamond Thinking - The purple set called for lateral thinking away from meaning to associations based on sound.
Slang for Rear End Was Straightforward - Informal references to the backside made the yellow group quick to solve.
NYT Connections today challenges the solver with easy wins, clever misdirects, and one tricky category that hides behind rhyming wordplay. The solver is rewarded for being observant and flexible in thinking.
Some categories are revealed quickly, yet others call for noticing subtle cultural and linguistic links that are far from obvious.
NYT Connections is a daily word grouping game offered by The New York Times. Players begin with a grid containing 16 words. The goal is to group them into four groups of four on the basis of shared theme. Only one solution exists for each set.
Type colors indicating an order of difficulty:
Yellow- easiest
Green and Blue- medium difficulty
Purple- hardest, usually with a play on words
Getting four correct words together will remove them from the board; any incorrect move will cost a life, and four wrong moves end the game.
TRAIN, BACKPACK, RACKET, CABOOSE, HUBBUB, SEAT, BUSTLE, STICK, BOUQUET, BAT, TAIL, COOKBOOK, MALLET, VEIL, NITWIT, BACKSIDE
Yellow Group – Hint: Related to the rear end, including slang and casual terms for body parts
One word clue: TAIL
Green Group – Hint: Sports tools used to hit a ball in different games, such as hockey or polo
One word clue: RACKET
Blue Group – Hint: Items commonly part of a bride’s attire at a wedding ceremony
One word clue: BUSTLE
Purple Group – Hint: Rhyming compound words that share a similar sound pattern
One word clue: HUBBUB
Yellow Group – Derriere
BACKSIDE, CABOOSE, SEAT, TAIL
Green Group – Used to Hit a Ball in Sports
BAT, MALLET, RACKET, STICK
Blue Group – Components of a Bride’s Ensemble
BOUQUET, BUSTLE, TRAIN, VEIL
Purple Group – Rhyming Compound Words
BACKPACK, COOKBOOK, HUBBUB, NITWIT
The NYT Connection puzzle answers were of medium difficulty today. The green category is quite straightforward: all four words are sports-related tools used to hit a ball. The yellow group is also fairly easy: all words are slang or informal names for the backside.
This one has a bit of a curveball in the blue group. Bouquet and veil are wedding references from the start, but a bustle and a train may be less familiar to some. A bustle is essentially a structural feature in certain dresses that creates volume at the back, while a train is a term for the long piece of fabric that trails behind a gown.
Both are terms commonly heard in historical fashion and bridal contexts but can lend themselves to confusion outside of these settings.
The purple group is the grandest stretch. Rhyming compound words such as hubbub and nitwit have a whimsical nature immediately, but matching them with backpack and cookbook requires rejiggering from the semantic level to the phonetic. It's this sort of phonetic affinity that NYT Connections often challenges.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers offer quick wins as well as those that demand more careful reasoning. Those who caught an early revelation for the sports group gained an advantage, while the rhyming compound set fostered extra lateral-thinking skills. Bridal attire was the prototypical blue group-example category that balanced familiar with more tricky elements such as the bustle.
One should be willing to shift gears from literal interpretations to slang to phonetic clues. Score some easy wins by picking the straightforward connections first, then work your way into the more creative ones!
NYT Connections keeps players hooked with its healthy mix of familiar and unfamiliar categories. The set is a great demonstration that knowledge and flexibility are both rewarded, turning the daily paradigm into a challenge appreciated in the eyes of both casual players and hardcore enthusiasts.
