July 13, 2026 Solution for Puzzle #1128 With Full Category Breakdown

Puzzle fans working through Monday’s New York Times Connections game have their solution: puzzle #1128, released July 13, 2026, sorted 16 words into four groups spanning synonyms for interrogation, everyday objects with a shared physical feature, fictional cats and a clever wordplay category built around hidden kiss-related slang, according to multiple outlets tracking the daily game.

Connections challenges players to organize 16 seemingly unrelated words into four hidden groups of four, with each group linked by a shared theme, color-coded by difficulty from yellow, the easiest, through green, blue and finally purple, traditionally the most difficult and often built around wordplay rather than straightforward meaning. Players select four words at a time and submit a guess, with the game indicating correct groupings by color and offering a “one away” warning when a guess is close but not quite right. Four incorrect guesses end the puzzle.

Monday’s yellow category centered on synonyms for interrogation, grouping the words examine, grill, pump and question, all terms that can describe pressing someone for answers. According to puzzle guide FluentSlang, the category carried a built-in trap, since “grill” evokes an obviously more intense form of questioning, while “pump” for information is a sneakier fit that many players initially set aside, expecting it to belong instead to a category involving physical pumping actions, gym equipment or footwear.

The green group asked players to identify everyday objects that share a physical feature, linking bucket, drawer, mug and umbrella, all items defined by having a handle. FluentSlang described the category as deceptively simple, noting that the word “handle” is never stated outright in any of the four entries, making the connection harder to spot than it might initially appear. The guide also flagged “mug” as a particular trap, since players might expect the word to fit into a category involving faces or slang terms rather than physical objects.

The puzzle’s blue category asked players to identify fictional cats from film and television, connecting Figaro, Puss, Salem and Tom, drawing on characters ranging from Disney’s “Pinocchio” to the “Shrek” franchise, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Tom and Jerry.” TechRadar’s Connections columnist admitted to struggling with this particular group, describing making three incorrect guesses before finally landing on the correct combination of fictional felines.

Monday’s purple category, traditionally the trickiest of the four, required players to recognize a hidden word for “kiss” sitting at the start of each entry: bussin, kisser, peckish and smackdown. Each word conceals a different term for a kiss within its opening letters, with “buss” serving as an archaic word for a kiss that fell out of common usage in the 1600s, “kiss” appearing directly within “kisser,” “peck” hidden at the start of “peckish,” and “smack” opening “smackdown.” TechRadar’s columnist noted the surprise of learning that connection only after finishing the puzzle, writing that discovering “buss” as an old-fashioned word for a kiss felt like a word overdue for a comeback.

One puzzle guide covering Monday’s board summarized the overall design as deceptively welcoming at first glance before revealing its true difficulty. “The NYT Connections puzzle for July 13, 2026 looks friendly at first, then quietly bites,” FluentSlang wrote. “You get words that beg to be sorted the obvious way, and every obvious way is wrong.” Other coverage described the puzzle as blending physical actions, clever rearrangements and nostalgic references, noting that the mix of straightforward associations with a more playful wordplay category made for a satisfying solve once every group finally clicked into place.

Connections was developed internally by the Times and rolled out widely in 2023 following a beta testing period, building on the momentum generated by Wordle, which the paper had acquired the previous year. Since its full launch, Connections has become one of the more popular entries in the Times’ expanding games section, which also includes Wordle, Strands, the Mini Crossword, Sudoku and Pips, part of a broader strategy by the paper to build a suite of daily puzzles that keeps readers returning to its platform consistently.

The category names themselves remain hidden from players at the outset of each puzzle, requiring solvers to infer each group’s connecting theme purely from the 16 scrambled words presented on the board. That design choice has made the game notably prone to misdirection, since certain words are often deliberately chosen because they could plausibly fit into more than one category before a puzzle’s true structure becomes clear. Monday’s board illustrated that tendency well, given how many of its words, including “mug,” “pump” and “grill,” carried multiple plausible meanings that could have pointed solvers toward the wrong grouping entirely.

Beyond the standard Connections puzzle, the Times has also continued expanding into sports-specific content through its ownership of The Athletic, with Connections: Sports Edition offering a spinoff format that resets daily at midnight Eastern time alongside the main puzzle, asking players to group 16 sports-related terms into four themed categories drawn from teams, players and league-specific vocabulary.

For players who prefer working through Connections gradually rather than seeing the full solution at once, most puzzle-tracking outlets offer graduated hint systems that follow the game’s own difficulty ladder, presenting clues from the yellow category through purple in ascending order of difficulty. That structure allows players to request a partial nudge, such as a thematic hint for the purple category alone, without necessarily spoiling the remaining groups if they would still like to solve those independently.

Access to the daily Connections puzzle, along with Wordle and the Mini Crossword, remains free through the Times’ games app and website, while the publication’s full puzzle archive, including older Connections boards, requires a Times Games subscription to access. The paper has continued to build out tools surrounding its puzzle offerings in recent years, including performance-tracking features that let players monitor their solving statistics over time, similar in spirit to the Wordle Bot analysis tool available for that game.

Tuesday’s Connections puzzle is scheduled to reset at midnight Eastern time, continuing the game’s daily rotation. Players looking for hints ahead of the next release can typically expect updated guides to appear across puzzle-tracking sites within hours of each new puzzle going live, following the same category-by-category format used to break down Monday’s grid.