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.
Looks like a standalone French phrase and can pull solvers toward foreign-language guesses, but it actually shares a plain freedom meaning with other permission terms.
On its face a movie term, so solvers may chase a film group; the hidden key is the final word as a way to carve.
Could easily be sorted into banking or computer hardware, but its most notable feature is the repeated idea already inside the abbreviation.
Reads as an audio accessory or a person's name, yet it really belongs with physical computer sockets.
BLANK CHECK, CARTE BLANCHE, FREE REIN, and FULL AUTHORITY all mean having total freedom or power to act. The group pairs a French phrase with three English idioms, which makes the synonym set feel broader than usual.
CARD SLOT, HEADPHONE JACK, OPTICAL DRIVE, and USB PORT are all hardware openings where you insert media, cables, or peripherals. The names are everyday tech terms, but JACK and DRIVE can sneakily read as non-hardware words.
ATM MACHINE, LCD DISPLAY, PIN NUMBER, and UPC CODE each contain an abbreviation plus a word that repeats one of its letters. This is a classic Redundant Acronym Syndrome group that rewards noticing common phrasing quirks.
COURT SCRIBE, DIRECTOR'S CUT, PIZZA SLICE, and SAT SCORE all end with a word that means to mark, score, or cut into a surface. The phrases first read as unrelated themed nouns, which hides the verb-final pattern.
Wyna Liu pairs a straightforward synonym set with a hardware list to keep the opening clean, then hides the purple group in phrase endings—SCRIBE, CUT, SLICE, SCORE. The blue group functions as a familiar redundancy joke, but placing ATM MACHINE and PIN NUMBER near tech words tempts misgrouping. The board’s main illusion is final-word polysemy: words that are nouns in context become verbs of carving when isolated.
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.
