Connections #1,226
October 19, 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 BOIL.
- Green: one of the four is GAS.
- Blue: one of the four is RIB.
- Purple: one of the four is ALIBIS.
Hint 2: the four categories
- Yellow: Seethe.
- Green: All Talk.
- Blue: "mc" Things At Mcdonald's.
- Purple: Ending In Birds.
Today's Connections groups, #1,226
The purple group
Purple today is Ending In Birds: ALIBIS, BALLOON, ESCROW, MOHAWK. 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 #1,225, October 18, 2026: Places To Store Clothes (BUREAU, CHEST, TRUNK, WARDROBE); Things That Come In Sticks (BUTTER, DEODORANT, DYNAMITE, INCENSE); Famous Perfumes (ANGEL, COCO, OBSESSION, OPIUM); Starting With Things That Cloud The Air (FOGERTY, HAZEL, MISTER, VAPORETTO). 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.
