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.
Cross could be misinterpreted as a verb meaning to go across, but also as the name of a basketball player (Chris Paul is not in the group), or as a crossword clue.
Bird is a basketball legend (Larry Bird) but also a common word that might fit a general 'animals' category, misleading solvers.
Saw is a palindrome (reads same backwards) but it's actually not—it's part of the famous palindrome 'A man, a plan, a canal, Panama' trick.
CROSS, FORD, TRAVERSE, and WADE all describe different ways to get across a river—by boat, by foot, or by swimming.
BIRD (Larry), CURRY (Stephen), JAMES (LeBron), and JORDAN (Michael) are all basketball legends who have won the NBA Most Valuable Player award multiple times.
ABLE, ELBA, SAW, and WAS are the four words from the classic palindrome 'A man, a plan, a canal, Panama' that are not themselves palindromes. The trick is that they appear in the famous mirror sentence.
CIAO (chow), PALM (pom), PEEK (pik), and PITT (pit) sound like dog breeds when spoken aloud: Chow Chow, Pomeranian, Pekingese, and Pit Bull.
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.
