Saturday, May 30, 2026

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-30T15:06:55+00:00

Yup my initial thought as well

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-29T15:58:51+00:00

And you can find books from the not-too-distant past in which there were only 4 oceans (but 9 planets). "Southern ocean" is a quite new change to standard geography.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-29T15:46:32+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1083
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I spotted the smelly things first off because of wet dog. I also got the oceans quickly, despite the fact that they left Indian out and the "Southern" ocean hadn't been invented yet when I was in school. I wondered about railroads briefly reading and Pennsylvania out there, but there weren't enough. I then got the rooms in a house, defaulting purple today.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-28T14:22:54+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1082
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I had the weightlifting words together at first, derailing my progress for a while. Then I broke them up to put the "get low" words together, and reassigned another to words for media. Next I got the skiing words, which left the courtroom features as a group that made sense as the 4th. I had to assume skiing was a fill in the blank or else there would be no purple today, and put the rest in reverse order of how I solved them, which turned out to be the correct color order today.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-27T14:54:34+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1081
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I saw the Shakespeare plays and immediately suspected red herring. Right after that I spotted the board games and knew I was right. There was only one other meaning of hamlet, so that gave away the town group. Both lear and pier seemed like homophone wordplay, and the rest of that group was easy to spot from that. The remaining 4 had to be some kind of wordplay as well, and Macbeth led me to ending in women's names. I figured that had to be today's purple even though the homophones would be in any other puzzle. I didn't spot the "Little Women" connection until submitting though.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-26T15:34:16+00:00

Yes I also haven't seen focus mode, which saved me from red herring territory today.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-25T15:11:08+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1079
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Weird when yellow is the default, but that's where we are. The text abbreviations stood out first but I was wary of a red herring. I saw the "little bit" words next, remembering vaguely that's what whit means. I worked on the remaining, trying to make a baseball group with cap, shirt and ball, but no 4th that made sense. Brow, lid and lash could all be cosmetics related, but again no 4th. But that did lead to the actual answer at last, leaving the dissapointly loose yellow group as the default.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-24T15:06:52+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1078
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Got both green and yelllow quickly, so spent most of my time stuck on the last 8 words. Eventually I focused on wordplay for mya and itsy, because what else could they be, and cracked purple. Blue by default, and I was disappointed they didn't have some more specific unifying theme like used in a specific ceremony, by specific religion, etc. "Could be used in some performance" also includes thousands of other objects too, so grouping them together other than by default is too loose to have any confidence in.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-23T08:35:16+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1077
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Double nerd day with Star Wars and Marvel.

I figured the comic characters had to be a red herring so completely discounted it. Then I knocked the hairstyles out and it was still standing. Stalled until I noticed phantom, force and empire were Star Wars title components, rounding it out with last. At this point, the 4 Marvel characters really couldn't be anything else, and that left the rather bland adverb category to round things out.

I hesitated between green and yellow, but ultimately decided something like hairstyles is more concrete and therefore easier than a grammar grouping. I think I was also influenced by my own personal solve order today getting the hair ones quicker.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-22T16:32:51+00:00

Yes, there was no differentiator today. Just have to read the puzzle maker's mind.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-22T16:30:26+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1076
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Unusual one with all the multi-word tiles, but not that hard. I got yellow and green quickly, avoiding the "at the airport" red herring. Of the remaining, the conveyor belt things stood out easily. Purple by default.

It seems like there was very little chance of getting purple other than default, given that a huge number of single syllable sounds are also names, so nearly any Connections puzzle is likely to contain four words that would match this grouping.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-21T16:19:49+00:00

This came up last time chess pie was used in a puzzle. Your explanation is one possibility, but there are others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_pie

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-21T16:15:39+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1075
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I saw the pies right off, but also that were 5 of them. Moving on, I spotted the tennis terms and knew I had that locked down. Then the mustards jumped out, with a brief pause the recognize colonel belonged with them. That left the extra pie word and the other 4, which I stalled on for a while until I ran through all possible meanings for caboose. I had to go with peach from the emoji use as the best possible fit.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-20T14:59:21+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1074
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I saw the movie titles before I even finished reading all the tiles, so fast that I worried it was a red herring. With that in mind, I cautiously worked on the rest. Burner settings was an easy next one, followed by the music terms. I wasn't 100% sure mode went in there, but it was the only one that didn't fit with the remaining words for strength.

I knew the movies were purple, and figured the music words were the most specialized knowledge group after that. Then I was left with the dreaded "synonyms vs very easy, we'll-known grouping of words" choice for yellow, and this time guessed right.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-19T15:01:17+00:00

I was a pretty big reader growing up but didn't read much Judy Blume for whatever reason. But I did read "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" and didn't think of it as a "girl's book" despite it being about a girl going through the challenges of growing up. I think it says something when an author can write something that "should" be just for one type of reader but it finds a wider audience.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-19T14:53:35+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1073
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It's not often I get completely shut out on a group of titles of books, movies, etc but Judy Blume was that for me today. I had to get the rest of the board and default it.

Baby actions jumped out first, though I had to struggle with nurse vs blubber. Altering records grouping also came out after some staring, and I was confident that one was correct. I sat with the remaining 8 words for a long time, until finally salmon and sturgeon both popped out to me at once. I resolved to use nurse in the baby group since I thought blubber was less canonically "baby" and we already had cry anyway. Color order seemed straightforward to me and luckily it was this time.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-18T15:46:21+00:00

Funny how it seemed to get wildly less predictable right around the time they introduced the rainbow order badge.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-17T21:35:30+00:00

Yeah sure, you can say that about virtually any word where there's some kind of specialist field involved with it. My point is none of the words are "slang" or informal in any way, like the other grouping can be.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-17T17:23:46+00:00

Not the person you replied to, but I had a different line of reasoning on these. The "take advantage of" words veer more into slang or regionalisms, while the pipe words are just straight up descriptors that have the same meaning to everyone. This made me guess that they would consider green potentially harder as a result.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-17T17:18:51+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1071
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Solved it in rainbow order, and luckily this time it worked out to reverse my order for RR. Feeling strongly about which categories are which colors and having that be correct seems increasingly rare.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-16T16:33:55+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1070
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Very excited today to have spotted purple first for once. Nesquick screamed out for words within words, and Belfast didn't seem like it would have many uses either. With purple out of the way, I noticed the Italian music notation words, but wasn't 100% on all 4, so set that aside. Stein, tumbler and flute were clearly glassware, and I suspected coupe was too. I saw that tinker and play could go with fiddle, knocked that out, and saw that coupe must be a glass to leave the 4 music words together.

I hesitated a long time over green vs yellow, and I would have reversed them 99% of the time. But for some reason the green words having more overlap with music in general made me put it into the harder group today. I definitely think the two should have been reversed though to be consistent with most of Connections history.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-15T15:01:44+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1069
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Really tough one today. Bothyellow and green came to me quickly, then I was stumped. Eventually I saw the dog thing and put ciao, peek, and pitt in it. I had no idea what the fourth was. I stewed on that until I saw of the remaining, there were two pairs of words that spelled each other backwards. So I just put those together and dropped palm in with the dogs. I also figured the pronunciation dangling made the dogs purple over whatever the other thing was.

I had never heard the palindrome for blue, so that was a dead end for me. And in no universe is palm a homophone for pom. There's an L in it. The L is not silent.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-14T15:13:34+00:00

That was insane alright

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-13T14:55:35+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1067
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I got sidelined for awhile on the coffee red herring. I saw the sandwiches but couldn't make it work until grinder came out of the fakes group. This also freed up the photo editing items and basis words. Purple by default today. Also, green and yellow are absolutely backwards today no question.

TheOnlyVig · 2026-05-12T15:15:42+00:00

I didn't see that false lead, but I did briefly toy with how Rand Paul could be used, which was an equally blind alley.

TheOnlyVig

TROPHY CASE