It is a real headache today. May 15. Puzzle #1067? No. #1069. The NYT Connections grid refuses to let you rest easy. You think you know the rules? Try this one. 🧩
Most players get tripped up by accent shifts or dog names that sound exactly like other words. If you are reading this after the game is done, good for you. The Times has that handy bot now. You play, it judges you. A numeric score appears. A breakdown follows. You can track your win streaks. Your perfectionism. Nerd out all you want.
Where the clues hide
Hints matter. Especially when the theme is obscure. Here is the spread, from easiest yellow to that maddening purple corner.
- Yellow: Travel through Mississippi. Or any river, really.
- Green: Hoops legends.
- Blue: That palindrome about Elba.
- Purple: Woof. 🐕
The Answers
Yellow is straightforward. It is about movement through water. You cross, ford, traverse, and wade. Simple geography.
Green is sports trivia. Three of these guys are living. One is dead, but his stats are still huge. Larry Bird. Steph Curry. LeBron James. Michael Jordan. All NBA MVPs multiple times over. Easy if you watch basketball. Hard if you prefer cricket.
Blue requires literary memory. Think back to “Able was I ere I saw Elba.” Which words aren’t palindromes themselves? Able, Elba, saw, and was. The rest—was I ere I—flip backwards fine. These do not.
Purple. The troublemaker.
You need to think like a dog lover who speaks Italian and geography at the same time. The trick? Homophones. Familiar names for breeds, said differently.
Ciao. Sounds like Chow. (Chow Chow)
Palm. Sounds like Pom. (Pomeranian)
Peek. Sounds like Peke. (Pekingese)
Pitt. Sounds like Pit. (Pit Bull)
Does it make sense? Maybe not to an American ear. “Palm”? You are petting a tree. But phonetically? It lands. Every time.
History’s hardest grids
This one bites. But have you seen the ones ranked higher in pain tolerance tests?
The absolute hardest puzzle ever published? It was #1. Theme: things that can “run”. You had a candidate. A faucet. Mascara running down your cheek. And a nose.
Close behind are puzzles asking for things you “set”. Mood. Record. Table. And somehow… volleyball.
Then there was the “power ___” slot. A power nap. A power plant. A Power Ranger. A power trip.
And #4. Things in a dozen. An egg. A juror. A month. And a rose? Really. A rose?
So there you have it. Your daily mental gymnastics. Did you get the dog names? Or did you click “shove it in my car” after round one? We don’t judge. But we do track.
Tomorrow’s grid will be just as annoying. 🐶
