The latest New York Times Connections puzzle (#916) proved challenging for many players. The difficulty stemmed from obscure connections requiring specific knowledge of fashion, etymology, baseball history, and Greek mythology—all with a twist.
Decoding the Categories
The puzzle is broken into four color-coded categories: Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, each with a unique theme. The NYT now offers a bot to track your performance and analyze your answers if you wish to nerd out over your win rate.
Hints for Each Group
Here’s a breakdown of the clues provided in the original article:
- Yellow: A fashion trend.
- Green: A letter that’s not pronounced.
- Blue: Famous players from a New York baseball team.
- Purple: Well-known fictional characters, altered slightly.
The Solutions Revealed
Here’s how the puzzle breaks down, word by word:
- Yellow (Wide-Legged Pants): Culotte, Gaucho, Harem, Palazzo. These all describe different styles of wide-legged pants.
- Green (Silent “T”): Apostle, Depot, Mortgage, Poirot. Each word contains a silent “T” that many people don’t realize is there.
- Blue (New York Mets Legends): Gooden, Piazza, Seaver, Strawberry. These are all iconic players in the history of the New York Mets baseball team.
- Purple (Greek Myths Minus a Letter): Aja (Ajax), Are (Ares), Her (Hera), Hercule (Hercules). The trick here is that each answer is a Greek mythological figure with one letter removed.
Previous Hard Puzzles: A Pattern?
The NYT has identified several previous puzzles as particularly difficult. These puzzles often rely on abstract connections that aren’t immediately obvious. For example, previous tough themes included “things you can set,” “one in a dozen,” and “streets on screen”—all requiring lateral thinking.
In summary: Today’s puzzle was a test of broad cultural knowledge. The difficulty highlights the puzzle’s reliance on niche categories, making it more challenging than average.
