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NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

What do you mean "crown" and "tiara" aren't in the same category?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
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Gael Cooper
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New York Times Connections word game shown on a phone sitting on a computer keyboard.

Connections is a year old, and some of those puzzles have been real stumpers.

 James Martin/CNET

Connections, one of many addictive online puzzles from The New York Times online, turned a year old on Wednesday with a special cinematic puzzle. Spoilers ahead, but all four categories shared a movie theme, though the specific topic was different for each group of four. One group featured movie titles with rhyming words, like Kill Bill. Honestly, I never thought "E" and "T" rhymed, but yep, they do. Phone home, indeed. 

Connections launched on June 12, 2023, joining other popular games, such as Wordle, which celebrated its 1,000th puzzle in March with a fairly easy answer. 

Connections is a very different game from Wordle. In Wordle, you have six chances to guess a five-letter word. In Connections, you're given 16 words and need to sort them into four categories. The big problem is that many of the words fit into multiple categories -- and some of the categories themselves are really loopy. ("Car companies minus letter" was one, turning DODGE into DOGE and HONDA into HODA.)

NYT Connections app logo on a purple gradient background

Happy birthday, Connections, you magnificent brain-buster.

 New York Times/CNET

We have Wednesday's Connections answers here, plus the answers for Wednesday's Wordle, as well as the answers for the newer Strands game.

The Times released some Connections birthday statistics in honor of the milestone. In the past year, 55.2 million people finished a Connections puzzle without any mistakes. The most common time to play Connections is 9 a.m. And the top cities that completed the most Connections puzzles are a global group. Here are the top 10:

  • New York
  • Chicago
  • Sydney
  • Melbourne
  • Brooklyn
  • Seattle
  • Los Angeles
  • Toronto
  • Philadelphia
  • Minneapolis

But my favorite Connections stat released on the game's birthday was shared on Instagram, where the newspaper posted the five most difficult puzzles.

Those five include some gems, like the Aug. 16, 2023, puzzle, where "bacon" and "egg" are split up, with neither of them going in the category called "breakfast foods." 

The toughest puzzle of Connections' first year, however, came on Oct. 12, 2023. That's where "crown" and "tiara" ended up in different categories. Crown showed up in "parts of a watch," while tiara represented Wonder Woman's costume. Only 19.63% of players solved that day's puzzle.

One Connections player commented on Instagram, "I'm new to this game, do they often have words that could fit into multiple categories?"

Oh yes, sweet summer child, oh yes, indeed.