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.
A wood chip fits perfectly with 'amounts of wood,' but this puzzle uses it as a snack.
The computer company name overshadows its geographic meaning as a small valley.
Commonly refers to the smallest finger, hiding its color-plus-letter construction.
Often associated with a sharp taste or the Chinese dynasty, obscuring that it's 'tan' plus a letter.
CHIP, CRACKER, NUT, and PRETZEL are all classic crunchy snacks often eaten at parties or with dip.
BOARD, LOG, SPLINTER, and TREE represent wood in different sizes, from a tiny splinter to a massive tree.
DALE, DELL, GORGE, and HOLLOW all refer to valleys or depressions in the landscape, though some are more obscure than others.
BRONZER (bronze + R), PINKY (pink + Y), REDO (red + O), and TANG (tan + G) each add a letter to a color name to create a new word.
The editor brilliantly planted CHIP as a wood-related decoy to pull solvers away from the snack group. Meanwhile, DELL's tech connotation and PINKY's bodily association serve as smokescreens for the geography and color-plus-letter categories. The purple group’s wordplay disguises ordinary words as seamless wholes, a hallmark of clever Connections construction. This puzzle’s interlocking misdirections create a satisfying 'aha' once the wood pieces and valley terms click.
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.
