Start with the spoiler-free hints. Go deeper only when you need to. Reveal answers on your own terms.
A direction for each group — no names given.
What kind of thinking each group asks for.
Pointed nudges on the words built to fool you.
Every Connections board plants a few decoys. Here are today’s, and why they pull you the wrong way.
They look like sports equipment and could be grouped with other physical objects; the container-based connection is easy to overlook.
Most solvers first read it as a verb or social media action, so its food-related compound use hides in plain sight.
It feels like a generic intensifier or prefix, masking the fact that only one specific compound is relevant.
Lipstick, poster, tennis balls, and toothpaste all share the cylindrical packaging format, even though tennis balls usually come in a rigid tube-like can. The variety across beauty, sports, and oral care makes the group feel broad until you think of their containers.
Fragile, Heavy, Perishable, and This Side Up are all warnings or handling instructions found on a shipping box. They turn everyday cautionary language into a satisfyingly literal group.
Caliph, Khan, Pharaoh, and Shogun are all historical sovereign titles from distinct cultures and eras. The set rewards knowing world history beyond familiar kings and queens.
Dust, Poke, Salad, and Super each pair with Bowl to form a familiar compound or event, from a food dish to a football championship. The fill-in-the-blank pattern hides behind four very different base words.
Wyna Liu builds two adjacent container ideas—things in tubes and shipping-box warnings—to push solvers toward packaging before they notice other relationships. The "___ BOWL" group is especially sly because Super, Poke, Salad, and Dust all feel like ordinary standalone nouns. Meanwhile, four sovereign titles form a clean history set that is hard to mistake once one is spotted.
a textbook decoy
requires lateral thinking
Solving the easiest group first reshapes how you read the entire board.
The editors reuse certain misdirection patterns. Learning to spot them saves guesses.
Purple is never what it first appears to be. Six structural patterns explain most of them.
Film titles, band names, and celebrity surnames hide in plain sight.
