Stuck on today’s puzzle. You aren’t alone. The New York Times Connections grid from May 11 (puzzle #1065) is giving people trouble. Specifically the purple group. It forces you to hunt for connections inside other words. That kind of lateral thinking is annoying. But fun? Debatable.
The Times has a Connections Bot now. Similar to the one for Wordle. Play your game first. Then feed it to the bot. It gives you a numeric score. It also analyzes your guesses. If you register with the Games section, you can track stats. Win rate. Streaks. How many times you nailed a perfect four. Go ahead. Nerd out.
Here are the hints. Ranked by difficulty. Yellow first. Purple last.
- Yellow: Pretty sly.
- Green: Different plans.
- Blue: Elementary my dear Watson.
- Purple: Hidden anatomy words.
Let’s look at the answers.
Yellow Group
Theme: Move stealthily (when combined with “in”).
The words are creep, slip, sneak, and steal.
Simple enough. Right?
Green Group
Theme: Kinds of schemes.
Look at color, Ponzi, pyramid, and rhyme.
Wait. Color? A color scheme. Got it. Ponzi scheme. Pyramid scheme. Rhyme scheme. The word “scheme” anchors them all.
Blue Group
Theme: Detective movies.
Four classics here. Chinatown, Knives Out, Seven, and Vertigo.
No tricks in this one. Just good cinema.
Purple Group
This is where you struggle. The theme is body parts. But not just any body parts. They are surrounded by two letters.
Hidden inside.
elegy holds leg. karma hides arm. keyed wraps around eye. shandy contains hand.
Subtle. Brutally subtle.
Why do they make the hard puzzles so hard? Maybe to break our brains. Or just because they can.
If you want to practice your frustration, look back at past titles for hardest puzzles. They’ve noted these specific grids as particularly cruel:
- #5 “things you can set”: mood, record, table, volleyball.
- #4 “one in a dozen”: egg, juror, month, rose.
- #3 “streets on screen”: Elm, Fear, Jump, Sesame.
- #2 “power ___”: nap, plant, Ranger, trip.
- #1 “things that can run”: candidate, faucet, mascara, nose.
See patterns yet. Or is it all random chaos?
