This one felt like a morning desk puzzle: a browser open, a little music in the background, and one oddball cluster refusing to explain itself right away. Once a couple of clean sets click into place, the rest of today’s grid starts to speak more clearly.
Today's Connections hints (#1135)
Show four hints, easiest to hardest ↓
Today's Connections answers
Reveal all four groups ↓
BLARE · HERALD · SOUND · TRUMPET
BUTTON · ICON · LINK · MENU
BUBBLE TEA · OYSTER · SWINE · WISDOM
ALEXA · MEADOW · PORTOBELLO · SAKES
A few thoughts on today's puzzle
I thought today’s puzzle was fairly kind for three quarters of the board, then properly sneaky at the end. The loud-publicity set was the easiest foothold for me; those words all share that brass-band energy, and once you see one or two, the others line up quickly. The screen-navigation set also felt straightforward, especially if you imagined a webpage laid out in front of you.
The blue group was where the puzzle got more interesting. Its members don’t all live in the same lane, which is exactly why it works: one points to jewelry, another to food, another to a proverb-like phrase, another to a classic expression. That makes the connection feel a bit more literary than purely literal. It’s the sort of category that arrives in flashes rather than step-by-step logic.
Purple, meanwhile, is classic mischief. A couple of those entries look as if they belong to ordinary nouns or names, so the real move is to stop reading them as whole units and inspect their openings. That’s a good reminder for late-game Connections: if the board seems almost solved but not quite, the trick may be structural rather than definitional.
There were also some nice decoys today between everyday tech language and words that can act as verbs, plus a few terms that feel food-adjacent. If you’re on a puzzle streak, it’s also a good day to swing by writeupcafe.com for Wordle, Strands, and Spelling Bee.
Connections FAQ
Which group was the main trap today?
The last set was the real snare, because the entries look ordinary until you notice that each one starts with the name of an alcoholic drink. It’s a classic hidden-pattern finish.
Was the blue category supposed to feel a little broad?
Yes, and that’s part of its design. The connection isn’t one single context but a web of associations around the same object, which makes the set feel trickier than a plain synonym group.
What was the best starting point?
I’d start with either the loud announcement words or the on-screen navigation words. Both are clean, familiar categories and help reduce the board quickly.
How do I spot a purple-style trick faster?
When the remaining words seem unrelated as whole words, try looking at prefixes, suffixes, embedded words, sound-alikes, or letter patterns. The hardest group often asks you to read the entries a different way.
What is NYT Connections?
Connections is a daily word-association puzzle from the New York Times. You're given 16 words and have to sort them into four groups of four that share a hidden link, with only four mistakes allowed. It resets at midnight Eastern, and it's free at nytimes.com/games/connections.
We refresh this page every day with fresh hints and the full solution — bookmark it for tomorrow.
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