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 has both an anatomical meaning and a dog-related one, so it invites a wrong grouping.
It sounds like it belongs with animal words, but its actual role is emotional.
It looks anatomical, yet here it means a devoted fan.
BICUSPID, CANINE, INCISOR, and MOLAR are all dental terms, but CANINE doubles as a dog adjective, creating an early lure toward the animal-flavored words elsewhere.
BROTHERLY, PUPPY, SELF, and UNREQUITED all modify or describe forms of love. PUPPY is especially sneaky because it also fits the canine cluster on the board.
FIEND, HEAD, HOUND, and LOVER are all informal nouns for someone intensely devoted to something. HEAD is the least obvious, since it usually suggests anatomy rather than fandom.
DOGGY, MATURATED, TRENCHED, and TRIPPING each become a wetness synonym when the opening letter is swapped: SOGGY, SATURATED, DRENCHED, DRIPPING. The surface words seem unrelated, which is the point.
Wyna Liu plants a canine decoy across three color bands: CANINE in the dental set, PUPPY in the affection set, and DOGGY plus HOUND in the wordplay and enthusiast sets. That cross-category animal echo makes naive sorting feel plausible. The purple group is especially elegant because the visible words look like ordinary past participles, not phonetic puzzles.
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.
