Connections #1,187
September 10, 2026Sixteen words and four groups of four. Yellow is usually the straightforward one and purple is usually wordplay, so the hints below go one step at a time.
Hint 1: one word from each group
- Yellow: one of the four is LEAD.
- Green: one of the four is CATIO.
- Blue: one of the four is BADLANDS.
- Purple: one of the four is SEXTANT.
Hint 2: the four categories
- Yellow: Chemical Elements.
- Green: What You Might See Sticking Out Of A Window.
- Blue: Bruce Springsteen Classics.
- Purple: Ending In Synonyms For "happening Now".
Today's Connections groups, #1,187
The purple group
Purple today is Ending In Synonyms For "happening Now": ADULT CONTEMPORARY, ALTERNATING CURRENT, REPRESENT, SEXTANT. Purple is the group the setters build last, and it is usually a hidden word, a sound, or a phrase pattern rather than a plain category. If two of its words looked like they belonged somewhere else, that was the point.
Yesterday's Connections
Connections #1,186, September 9, 2026: Hard To Understand (BEWILDERING, ESOTERIC, INCOMPREHENSIBLE, OPAQUE); Words With "small" Prefixes (MICROBREWERY, MINIVAN, NANOTECHNOLOGY, PICOSECOND); Horror Movies (ARACHNOPHOBIA, HALLOWEEN, IT, SAW); Words Before "force" (BRUTE, ELECTROMAGNETIC, G, TASK). Yesterday's page ›
Connections is four groups. This one is five words.
One real news sentence a day, twenty to thirty words, something that actually happened. Keep the five words a headline would keep and let the rest go. Here is yesterday's, solved.
At Camden Lock, a 71-year-old woman, Beatrice Millar, took off her shoes, jumped in after a drowning man and saved him by holding his head above water.
Five tries. blue is the right word in the right place, orange is one of the five sitting somewhere else, grey is not one of them. The result beats the process, a name or a job beats a place, and the little words never count.
How you finish decides which sticker you keep.
