Wednesday’s edition of The New York Times’ popular word-grouping game served up a grid built around classic rock bands, wedding traditions, and a clever color-themed character category that lured solvers toward an early, incorrect grouping before the actual answer revealed itself.
How the Game Works
Connections by The New York Times is a unique daily word game that fans can enjoy online for free. The puzzle challenges players to sort a given set of 16 words into groups of four. Each group features a hidden theme that connects the four words that belong in it. Players get only four guesses to find out how the words are connected and categorize them accordingly. The game also provides a “one away…” pop-up as a hint whenever a player chooses three out of the four correct words in a group. The four groups, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, are divided according to the level of their difficulty, with Yellow being the easiest to sort and Purple featuring the trickiest theme to figure out.
Wednesday’s Four Categories
The themes and answers for the June 24, 2026, NYT Connections puzzle were as follows:
Yellow Group: Prog Bands — GENESIS, KING CRIMSON, PINK FLOYD, RUSH.
Green Group: Classic Wedding Gifts — CHINA, LUGGAGE, MONEY, TOASTER.
Blue Group: Red Characters — CLIFFORD, DEADPOOL, KOOL-AID MAN, MR. KRABS.
Purple Group: Rhyming Compound Words — CHICK FLICK, HELTER SKELTER, HUMPTY DUMPTY, MUMBO JUMBO.
The Color Trap That Caught Solvers Off Guard
Puzzle number 1109 features some heavy misdirection, with several words seemingly fitting into different themes before revealing the true groupings. Watch out for the red herrings today. At first glance, words like Pink and Deadpool look like they could fit into a simple color theme, but committing to that group early will cost you lives.
The trap centers specifically on Pink Floyd’s inclusion in the yellow prog-rock category, since the word “Pink” on its own could plausibly suggest a color-based grouping alongside the actually correct blue category of red-colored fictional characters. One solver described falling into exactly that confusion while working through the grid: “Not being familiar with the work of Kool-Aid Man put me at a disadvantage today and was the reason for my single mistake. While I knew that Clifford of Big Red Dog fame, Deadpool and Mr. Krabs favored the color red.”
Breaking Down the Categories
The yellow category gathered four influential progressive rock bands, bringing together Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, and Rush — a relatively straightforward grouping for fans of classic rock, though the inclusion of Pink Floyd specifically created the color-based misdirection that tripped up several solvers elsewhere in the grid.
The green category required players to think about traditional gift-giving customs, linking China, Luggage, Money, and Toaster as classic items associated with wedding registries and gift lists.
The blue category, despite its color-based misdirection trap, ultimately gathered four fictional characters who all happen to be red in appearance: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Deadpool, the Kool-Aid Man, and Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants.
The Purple Category’s Wordplay Challenge
As is typical for Connections puzzles, the purple category delivered the day’s most inventive twist, built around compound phrases that rhyme internally. The category brought together Chick Flick, Helter Skelter, Humpty Dumpty, and Mumbo Jumbo — four well-known rhyming compound terms that required solvers to think specifically about phrase structure rather than shared meaning or category.
Strategic Advice From Puzzle Outlets
Ahead of revealing the solution, several outlets offered general guidance for navigating Wednesday’s grid. We recommend looking closely at proper names and word structure first. Separating band names from characters and common terms will make the remaining words significantly easier to manage.
Other strategists emphasized broader habits worth building into a daily Connections routine. Before submitting a set of words, you should always check whether they fit somewhere else too. If you hit a dead end, use the shuffle button at the bottom of the grid — placing the words in different positions can spark new connections and act as a mental refresh, helping new patterns emerge that may not have been obvious in the original layout.
A Moderate Difficulty Rating
Despite the color-based misdirection built into the puzzle, early tester feedback suggested Wednesday’s challenge landed closer to the middle of the difficulty spectrum overall. NYT’s early testers rated today’s Connection puzzle 2.5 out of 5, putting it in the medium difficulty level — a rating that aligns with the mixed reactions from solvers who successfully avoided the Pink Floyd trap versus those who fell for it.
The Game’s Continued Popularity
Connections is one of the most popular online word games from The New York Times, closely trailing behind Wordle. The puzzle presents players with a 16-word, four-by-four grid that has helped cement the game’s status as a daily ritual for millions of solvers since its 2023 launch.
Where to Find More Puzzle Help
Besides Connections, other puzzles that fans can play on The New York Times Games collection include Wordle, Strands, Pips, the NYT Crosswords, and Sudoku, among others. Wednesday’s slate also included Wordle puzzle number 1831 and Strands puzzle number 843, giving puzzle enthusiasts a full menu of additional daily challenges beyond the standard Connections grid alone.
With Wednesday’s puzzle now solved by players who successfully navigated the Pink Floyd color trap and identified the rhyming compound words hidden in the purple category, attention turns to Thursday’s edition, puzzle number 1110, when a fresh sixteen-word grid and an entirely new set of hidden categories — and likely a fresh round of cleverly placed red herrings — will once again test the Connections community’s pattern-recognition skills before their four guesses run out.
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