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FLEECE, HOSE, HUSTLE, SHAFT — each word means to cheat or deceive, forming today’s clever “don’t get taken for a ride” group.
ALARM, DATE, LIGHT, STOPWATCH — classic wristwatch functions that mark time and keep you on schedule.
CAPOTE, LINCOLN, MILK, RAY — titles of real-life figures brought to life in Oscar-winning performances.
The New York Times Connections puzzle still puts solvers’ logic and lateral thinking to the test with its dexterous categorizations and semantic pitfalls. Saturday’s grid (Puzzle #743) provided just the proper balance of deception and delight, a puzzle that seemed deceptively simple at first but showed complex thematic connections behind the scenes.
Certain words, such as MILK, LIGHT, or GRANT, might have led players far astray, conjuring up everything from grocery stores to American presidents. But the real puzzle lay in separating how those recognizable words related to each other via idioms, timekeeping devices, negotiations, and performances that earned Oscars.
Whether you were left puzzled or quickly saw the connections, here’s a complete analysis of today’s puzzle and what bound the words together.
DATE, VEST, LIGHT, SHAFT, RAY, FLEECE, ALARM, LINCOLN, GRANT, MILK, HOSE, AWARD, HUSTLE, STOPWATCH, ACCORD, CAPOTE
Yellow: Swindle, FLEECE, HOSE, HUSTLE, SHAFT
This playful group hinged on cheating. Every word can be used to mean swindle or cheat a person, an appropriate ‘don’t get taken for a ride’ motif that caught out many who attempted to use MILK here instead.
Green: Digital Watch Features, ALARM, DATE, LIGHT, STOPWATCH
From alarms and timers to display lighting, such words describe essential functions of a digital watch. A few solvers complained about the use of ‘light,’ but the category remained faithful to its tech heritage.
Blue: Confer, ACCORD, AWARD, GRANT, VEST
Each of the four words conveys the meaning ‘to give’ or ‘bestow.’ ‘Vest,’ for example, is the most abstract; to ‘vest’ power or rights means to grant them, a gentle but exact addition officially.
Purple: Best Actor-Winning Biopics, CAPOTE, LINCOLN, MILK, RAY
Each of these is a title given to an actual historical figure portrayed in Oscar-winning performances: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln), Sean Penn (Milk), and Jamie Foxx (Ray).
Saturday’s NYT Connections puzzle exemplified why the game is so habit-forming, a masterful mixture of wordplay, culture, and devious deception. The Swindle set beckoned linguistic deception, the Watch Features group honored sparsity, and the Biopics category invested movie-class prestige in the grid.
As always, Connections rewarded pattern recognition and penalized quick guesses, reminding solvers that even the most mundane words can conceal remarkable relationships. Until next time, happy connecting.
