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Today’s NYT Connections blends everyday vocabulary with slang, technology, and science-based terms for a balanced challenge.
Color-coded categories progress from tangible objects to abstract measurement units, rewarding patience and logical grouping.
Limited attempts encourage careful elimination, contextual thinking, and awareness of informal and academic word meanings.
The connections puzzle from the NYT today is clever and, at the same time, accessible in an intelligent way. The puzzle from January 10 tests vocabulary, contextual understanding, and pattern recognition without being too overwhelming, making it an ideal choice for both casual players and seasoned solvers.
Some categories are obvious straight away, while others require a closer examination and a bit of lateral thinking, thus keeping the players involved in the whole solving process. The grid for today provides a constant feeling of going up, switching from very concrete links to abstract and scholarly ones.
This gradual increase in difficulty guarantees the satisfaction of the solver from the beginning to the end, giving the credit to the patient and meticulous elimination and not to the rushed guesses.
Each Connections puzzle on a daily basis involves a grid of 16 words, which may appear random and unstructured at first glance. The objective is to find four sets of four words that exhibit some common theme or relationship.
There is only one correct solution, and it allows players to make no more than three wrong attempts. Whenever a group is determined correctly, it is fixed and colored according to its difficulty:
Yellow: Easiest
Green: Severe
Blue: Challenging
Purple: Most challenging
ACROSS
Yellow – Hollow Cylinders: HOSE, PIPE, STRAW,
These are all empty tubes with a circular cross-section that are intended to allow materials to pass through them.
Green - Software Platforms: APP, DESKTOP, MOBILE
Both terms refer to a platform or an environment where digital software or services run.
Blue – Leave Quickly (Slang): Book, Dip, Jet, Split
All four words are used as informal terms for ‘to go out quickly.’
Purple - Units of Measurement: BAR, GRAM, MOLE
These are standard scientific units for the measurement of pressure, mass, amount of substance, and electric potential.
Also Read: NYT Connections Hints and Answers for January 9, 2026 (Puzzle #943)
The Connections puzzle from the New York Times dated Jan. 10 is more about noticing the not-so-obvious definitions and changes in meaning. The crossword has words from everyday speech as well as other words from technology, sci-fi, and science. The solver has to be nimble in their mind.
While moving from the more concrete Yellow group to the Purple category, which is much more abstract, the puzzle provides a great challenge in terms of difficulty. Even with a limited number of guesses, this edition of Connections Puzzle provides a great challenge in logic, vocabulary, and lateral thinking, which makes it a great puzzle.
