Thursday’s edition of The New York Times’ Connections puzzle sent players hunting through skincare routines, shades of black, precision-related terms and a cluster of tricky two-word phrases before the full board came together. Puzzle number 1,131, edited by Wyna Liu, followed the game’s usual color-coded structure, moving from its most straightforward grouping to its most deceptive.

Connections challenges players to sort 16 words or phrases into four hidden groups of four, with each group tied to a shared theme. The categories are ranked by difficulty and color-coded accordingly: yellow for the most straightforward, green for moderately tricky, blue for more abstract connections, and purple for the hardest group, which frequently leans on wordplay or double meanings. Players are allowed four mistakes before the puzzle ends, and the game, launched by the Times in June 2023, has grown into one of the publication’s most popular daily offerings, trailing only Wordle in reach.

Thursday’s yellow group, the easiest of the day, centered on skincare products: CLAY MASK, EYE CREAM, PEEL and TONER. Each item plays a distinct role in a typical skincare regimen. According to dermatologist Dr. Jeannette Graf, speaking to Byrdie, clay masks offer a range of benefits for the skin, including helping to brighten complexion, absorb excess oil, and support overall skin balance. Eye cream is generally used to brighten and moisturize the delicate skin beneath the eyes while helping to reduce the appearance of dark circles, and a peel is typically used to smooth skin texture and address blemishes. Toner, meanwhile, is commonly applied after cleansing to help balance the skin’s pH level and prepare it to better absorb other products like moisturizer.

The green group asked players to identify four shades of black: CHARCOAL, INK, JET and PITCH. Each word functions as a near-synonym for the color, drawing on different visual and cultural associations — charcoal evoking a softer, grayish black; ink suggesting a deep, saturated tone; jet referencing the polished black stone historically used in jewelry and mourning attire; and pitch calling to mind the tar-like substance long used as a descriptor for total darkness, as in the phrase “pitch black.”

Moving into the blue category, the puzzle’s third-hardest, Thursday’s theme centered on words associated with precision: BULLSEYE, CLOCKWORK, LASER and NEEDLE. A bullseye refers to the center of a target, such as one used in archery or darts, and by extension has become shorthand for hitting an exact mark. Clockwork evokes the finely tuned, reliably accurate mechanisms found inside traditional timepieces, often used to describe something running with flawless regularity. Laser and needle both carry associations with narrow, exact focus — a laser for its concentrated beam of light and precise targeting in fields ranging from surgery to manufacturing, and needle for the fine, exact point used in sewing, medicine and navigation.

The purple group, traditionally the day’s most difficult and prone to misdirection, asked players to spot a shared structural trick rather than a straightforward theme: DOT MATRIX, PERIOD PIECE, POINT BREAK and SPOT REMOVER. Each phrase begins with a word referring to a small mark or spot — dot, period, point and spot — a pattern that required players to look past the literal meaning of the full phrases and instead focus on their opening words. Puzzle commentators noted that the category was designed to reward careful observation over direct definition, since the phrases themselves span wildly different contexts, from printing technology to filmmaking to laundry care, with little in common beyond their first word.

Puzzle trackers following Thursday’s board flagged several red herrings built into the grid to steer solvers toward incorrect groupings. Words evoking printers or tattoos, for instance, appeared to gesture toward other possible categories before ultimately fitting into the “tiny marks” purple group instead. Commentators covering the puzzle also noted the deliberate overlap between categories as one of the signature traits of Connections under Liu’s editorship, with the game frequently constructed so that a word could plausibly belong to more than one group at first glance.

For players working through the puzzle without hints, common strategy advice from the Times’ own guidance includes starting with the most obvious, tightly bound sets — categories built around colors, numbers, or clearly related objects — before moving to groups that require thinking about alternate meanings or wordplay. Players are also encouraged to watch for shared prefixes or suffixes among the remaining words once the easier categories have been solved, since Connections puzzles often bury patterns in word structure rather than surface-level meaning. Staying flexible and expecting misdirection, particularly in the purple category, is widely cited as the most effective way to preserve a daily streak.

Thursday’s puzzle continued a run of varied themes throughout the week, following patterns in Wednesday’s board that similarly leaned on layered wordplay categories. Connections has built a loyal following in the two years since its 2023 launch by combining relatively simple mechanics with puzzles that reward lateral thinking, drawing comparisons to Wordle in terms of daily engagement even as it demands a different kind of reasoning from players.

The full set of answers for Thursday, July 16, puzzle number 1,131, are as follows: the yellow group for skincare products includes CLAY MASK, EYE CREAM, PEEL and TONER; the green group for shades of black includes CHARCOAL, INK, JET and PITCH; the blue group tied to precision includes BULLSEYE, CLOCKWORK, LASER and NEEDLE; and the purple group built around words beginning with tiny marks includes DOT MATRIX, PERIOD PIECE, POINT BREAK and SPOT REMOVER.

Connections is available daily alongside the Times’ other puzzle offerings, including Wordle, Strands, the Crossword, Letter Boxed and Sudoku, with a new Connections board set to go live at midnight local time for players looking to keep their streaks alive heading into Friday.