Connections was actually hard today. Not impossible. Just annoying. I hit the yellow category first, mostly because I like movies, or rather, the idea of a movie category. Turns out the trickiest one was hiding in the back, playing with our nostalgia for title tropes.
You’ve got a bot for this now. Like the Wordle one. You play. You win or you don’t. The bot grades you. If you’re registered, you can stalk your own stats. Win rates. Streaks. How many times you guessed perfectly before finally guessing the purple group on try five. It’s narcissistic in the best way.
How to think
Yellow starts simple. Splish-splash.
It’s geography, basically. Landforms touching water.
Delta.
Island.
Isthmus.
Peninsula.
Don’t overthink the spelling. Just look for the edges of the earth.
Green is slang for head. This feels like college talk or gym bro energy.
Coconut.
Dome.
Melon.
Pate.
“Don’t drop the dome.”
Blue? Spiking. But not just drinks.
You can spike punch, sure. But you also spike a volleyball.
Or your hair, in a mohawk.
Or… a sea urchin. Yes, it’s spiky. Technically you don’t ‘spike’ an urchin, but it fits the vibe of things that stick out pointy-ly. Wait, the category says ‘things that can be spiked.’
Okay, mohawk (hair). Punch (drink). Sea urchin (it is a spike?). Volleyball (action).
The logic is a bit loose there, isn’t it?
Purple is the killer. The prompt: “The ____ Man” movies.
This relies entirely on cultural osmosis. Or terrible memories.
The Invisible Man. Classic.
The Omega Man. George Clooney, apocalypse.
The Running Man. Arnold, dystopia, fake TV show within a TV show.
The last one? Elephant Man.
Why is The Elephant Man listed under this specific syntactic slot when the title is just The Elephant Man? Because the puzzle doesn’t care about grammar, only the slot fill. You fill the blank. “The [Elephant] Man.”
It works if you squint at the title page.
Past headaches
If today felt impossible, remember we’ve survived worse.
These puzzles from early days were brutal.
- Puzzle #5: “Things you can set.” Mood? Record? Table? Volleyball? Again with the volleyball. It’s in everything.
- Puzzle #4: “One in a dozen.” Egg. Juror. Month. Rose. That one was clever, in a ‘oh right, duh’ sort of way.
- Puzzle #3: “Streets on screen.” Elm. Fear. Jump. Sesame. A mix of sitcoms and cartoons.
- Puzzle #2: “Power ___.” Nap. Plant. Ranger. Trip. All noun-noun combos. Easy enough if you don’t freeze up.
- Puzzle #1: “Things that can run.” Candidate. Faucet. Mascara. Nose. Abstract verbs applied to objects. Or people. Or fluids.
You learn the patterns eventually. Or you just memorize the movie titles.
I still forget what “The Omega Man” was about. Does it matter?
Probably not. You still lose the purple round.
