No way that's purple: the NYT Connections thread

Because it's just not Wordle

Ha nice title :)

Didn't think today's was "exceptionally tricky" at all. I guess there was crossover but seeing the four categories unlocked what was what

https://i.imgur.com/f80rGy7.png

Got beaten by today’s too. Got purple first, then blue, then crapped out on the synonyms for zest, and missed the palindromes altogether (I think since that kind of connection is usually reserved for purple)

prefixes, lame.

That’s one I saw right away but was afraid to guess because, as you say, lame

Yes, I expected the final description to be more qualified than just that.

I guessed it first but in my head the category title was Latin prepositions. Made an underwhelmed noise out loud when the real one popped up.

(One of them is only an adverb anyway so I guess I should make the underwhelmed noise at myself)

The fuck is a California King?

It's a size of mattress.

ah! I got it, but only just.

Thanks for all the hidden text. I’ve been staring at the 4 purple words off and on all day.

California king I had never come across, whereas super king I had (in two contexts!) so yesterday I was a special snowflake

https://i.imgur.com/kJGlAOw.jpeg

I am from California and the only context I have encountered the term is online shopping for bedding…

I was honestly thinking for a few minutes… did the Sacramento NBA team change their name ? …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhBorPm6JjQ

Never heard of California king in my life.

And so I forgot to just reveal yesterday’s purple and lost my streak.

How are everyone's stats looking? Here are mine

https://i.imgur.com/DwM5Cq9.jpeg

I kind of wonder if the better players (not me!) will start deliberately aiming for higher score achievements like Reverse Rainbow now that the Bot exists? Personally, I just like getting the game right.

i can’t hear “california king” without thinking of chappell roan’s “red wine supernova”

My pal and I aimed for reverse rainbow already – slightly annoyed it's now a thing with a name!

omg i didn't get a single group! i spotted the yellow but whip and pump were also possibles for that, saw three of the blue group but would never have got the green.

I got them all in reverse rainbow order , but the order was a bit of a fluke as I strongly disagree with it. "Fire" only fitting with the other three when "up" is appended made it a ridiculous yellow imo, esp given the "pump" red herring.

And it was made harder by my knowing slides as sliders

funny, i thought today’s was the easiest in a long while.

But Alba, that category was get excited, with “up”, so that seems like a spurious complaint

I made three awful mistakes in a row before going “I’m not awake, don’t do this right now”. I later solved it after having coffee but yeesh

Dan, what I meant was amp, hype, pump and maybe psych all worked as the category without the up, so having to think of the 'up' bit to get that fire also belonged, was tricky! Connections Bot says only 19% of players got it as the first category, which is pretty low for a yellow)

oic, carry on

didn’t we have types of shoes as a category relatively recently?

On August 19 last year

I'd clearly not learned then that sliders can be called slides, as the four shoes were CLOG, PUMP, WEDGE and SLIDE (with MARY JANE as red herring) https://connections.swellgarfo.com/nyt/69

Ooo I didnt know there was an archive for Connexions.

Today’s was fun

Hard! Count myself lucky for only making one mistake (LAD was a clever one)

I managed a perfect score, blue first

i screwed up today. got the disney dog one but not having heard of a sizzle reel screwed up my "reels"

only yellow correct today :( wasted some guesses on green that went wrong

Got it in perfect order today, no mistakes.

Was also a bit thrown by reels, though I insisted on trying to get that one early on, rather than moving on, thus mucking up my score a bit. Got dogs right off the bat.

I managed a perfect score, blue first

High five to another member of today's 96 club.

Oof. Today's (Thurs) purple might trip up some people. I didnt get it, it was just the only category left. Luckily the others were easy. Also lol at the initial placement or row 1.

OF row 1 that should say.

i got purple second, pretty good category imo

I got it perfect reverse rainbow: though Angers isn't a place I know and I didn't know the PBS category, green and yellow were quite easy and Angers was the only likely sounding place that remained so the whole thing only took me 4 mins I think

reverse rainbow too. didn't actually spot the parties - i'm hopeless at the ones where you have to add a word! but i had an inkling about frontline and masterpiece (just as 'some kind of american tv thing') and the other two were by far the most likely to fit.

didn't have a clue about the Blue group but got all of the others easily enough

It got a 5/5 rating on the Connections Bot calculus so ilx has overperformed today

I would have trouble trying to go for reverse rainbow because I can never really see what is meant to distinguish the three easy ones from each other (and I don’t remember the order of the colours). Purple are easy to spot because they tend to be of a few particular types but you could put the others in any order & I’d be like ok sure

Yeah I think it helps that it's the same setter each day as you have to kind of get inside her head. I do quite often get yellow and green in wrong order

xp re: shaun ryder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omqBXqF9LZc

Tried for RR, went YPBG lol

PBYG

I talked myself out of RR

PBYG, Y and G interchangeable in difficulty imho

Whoa at that clip, ledge.

#1095 (WED) BYGP -- Not too bad, but I may never have been quite this uncertain about the colours!

BPGY, spotted the red herring then figured it out, colours a total crapshoot.

RR, almost did PBYG but then remembered that sometimes colors and the clues correspond, and pond scum and etc is often green, so

RR, possibly the least tricky puzzle ever (aside from figuring out what the colors are)?

#1096 (THURS) YGxxPB or something. B & P were almost completely unfamiliar. Less of this stuff please Wyna, kthx.

RR today, to my surprise. Yesterday felt like there was no P category... today felt like there were multiple

RR. Having lived for a while in the US definitely helped with purple, but blue was still mysterious leftovers

I found yesterday baffling and made three mistakes before completing it. Today was a very straightforward RR.

I'm with Leee on yesterday's.

YP then fail. never would have gotten Blue, as a non-US speaker or liver.
i thought G and B might be "things with one horn" and "things with two horns", imagining that UConn might have a logo/mascot

It occurs to me that I took waaaay too long to let go of the lovely 'biomedical prefix' red herring which made the near-random juggling of two sets of brand-names a little more dispiriting. Sorry Wyna if I was palpably grumpy 12 hours ago!

RR, found this one much easier than yesterday’s

Much tricked RR than yesterday, but b was leftovers, with broncho being particular eyerolling. Merriam-webster.com does list it as a variant spelling for bronco, but that's a very meh way to round out that category.

B was a very weak category, all four words

xxGYBP

Ha I thought B was hilarious

I was all set to guess it as P before ELLE and VENO clicked into place

this one seems especially USAian with eight answers basically trademarks operating in the US market but how many other markets?

ngl it’s a game from the most prominent paper in the US, so sometimes complaints about it being biased toward the US feel a little weird.

I came across this podcast on youtube with Wyna Liu talking at least in part about connections. I've only heard the first ten minutes (and got distracted as I do with podcasts) but it seemed OK if anyone's interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgV1LVT6ZVw
I'm sure it's available wherever people get podcasts from

^ Thanks! Am listening now.

#1097 (FRI) YBGP -- Had to come back to the latter two categories, after confirming that Y & B weren't red herrings houuuuurs ago. Somewhat tricky presentation but not particularly esoteric in essence.

While I probably *would* prefer that it was, say, The Guardian, ripping off Only Connect for a daily puzzle, I really don't see many actual *complaints* about deep Americana beyond the comments on the NYT 'companion' pages. They go kerrazy over there! Doesn't seem harmful, however, to comment the degree of cultural- loadedness of certain categories. Regional differences are quite interesting in themselves.

XXP: Haha, Only Connect comes up in that podcast (slightly after the midpoint) and things get ever so slightly awkward.

Colors were absolutely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ today

RR, fun one

RR but yeah, colors were entirely vibes and I'd probably get them in a different order if I played it again. The puzzles itself was pretty easy otherwise.

tbh i just went in reverse order of when i solved each category and it turned out to be RR

I had no idea of the colors, as borne out by my GPYB solve order

#1098 (SAT) BPGY -- quickest for a little while, though I couldn't really grasp B. Gambled on it being P, quite unsuccessfully.

RR though no way that's purple crossed my mind .

PYBG - how the hell tea service is yellow will forever confound me

PBYG— agreed

Bacon otm, I presume Wyna is ABC so she ought to be aware that tongs are the tools of the oppressor, we drink our tea bitter (except of course when it comes to boba tea).

#1099 (SUN) PBYG -- Not toooo vexing, kinda fun. Though careful deliberation over Y vs G didn't yield a happy ending!

RR, fun one, got taken in by a red herring or two but then reversed course

What NNN said. Y and G interchangeable imo

PxBYG. Purple leapt out first so I steamed in without doing my usual thing of trying to work it all out first but got a messed-up yellow as a result.

Another PBYG

PGBY, nearly taken in by the RH but because the groups all seemed pretty clear, aiming for RR actually saved me from making a mistake.

#1100 (MON) RR -- rushed through this one somewhat but earliest hunches turned out to be fine and dandy.

PBYG, seems obvious that Y is a more challenging category than G to me, oh well

BPYG, b inadvertently also could've been reclassified as purple i.e. SEA blank.

Regular rainbow but made a meal of getting there xYxxGBY. Was working under the assumption sea ___ was a category right up to and including playing the zodiac one.

xYxxGBP, rather.

#1101 (TUE) RR -- one of those games where I didn't *entirely* grasp what P was getting at, but entering such leftovers first worked out well.

I'm on a streak of PBYG for the past few days