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.
It looks like a tropical fruit, so solvers might hunt for other edible items or island plants rather than a body-part nickname.
Another fruit that appears to belong in a produce group, not a cheeky slang term for the head.
A Greek letter that stands alone, often leading solvers to search for other alphabet characters instead of a movie title.
A fancy spreadable food that misdirects toward a category of appetizers or liver-based dishes.
These four geographical features are all defined by their proximity to or interaction with water: a river DELTA, an ISLAND, an ISTHMUS, and a PENINSULA. It's a straightforward geography group, but ISTHMUS might trip up those who confuse it with an island.
Each word is a playful, informal way to refer to the human head: COCONUT, DOME, MELON, and PATE. The humor lies in how food shapes like melons and coconuts become anatomical nicknames.
The unifying verb 'spiked' takes on a different meaning for each: you can spike a MOHAWK, spike a bowl of PUNCH, find spikes on a SEA URCHIN, or spike a VOLLEYBALL. A clever double-meaning connector.
These words fill the blank in classic movie titles: The ELEPHANT Man, The INVISIBLE Man, The OMEGA Man, and The RUNNING Man. A nostalgic film trivia category that rewards pop culture knowledge.
Wyna Liu constructs a puzzle full of duplicitous overlap: fruits (COCONUT, MELON) masquerade as slang while a hairstyle, a drink, a sea creature, and a sport all share the versatile word 'spike.' The purple category relies on the iconic 'The ___ Man' film formula, which is satisfyingly precise once spotted but maddeningly elusive before. The geography group provides a grounding contrast to the more playful categories, balancing difficulty nicely.
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.
