The Tuesday edition of NYT Connections arrives with puzzle #1073, serving up a grid that rewards literary knowledge, baby-care familiarity, and the kind of lateral thinking that separates casual solvers from the obsessed. Today's challenge particularly favors anyone who grew up with Judy Blume paperbacks and can spot a fish hiding in plain sight.
What Makes Connections Tick
For newcomers, NYT Connections presents 16 words that must be sorted into four thematic groups of four. The twist? You're limited to four mistakes, and the color-coded difficulty system (yellow being easiest, purple being trickiest) means surface-level connections often mislead.
Since its June 2023 launch, Connections has carved out its niche in the Times' puzzle ecosystem, standing alongside Wordle and the crossword as a daily ritual for millions of players worldwide. The game's genius lies in its red herrings, words that could fit multiple categories but belong in only one.
Today's Grid at a Glance
Here are the 16 words staring back at you in puzzle #1073:
FOREVER | SALON | COOK | SURGEON
NURSE | DOCTOR | FUDGE | SUPERFUDGE
CRY | BLUBBER | TROT | ALTER
FOUNDER | BABBLE | DEENIE | TEETHE
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories, but don't be fooled by the medical-looking words lurking in plain sight.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Think about what occupies a newborn's entire daily agenda. These four words describe the full range of infant activity.
Green Category Clue: These verbs all describe ways to change something, but not in an honest, aboveboard way. Think kitchen and lab mischief.
Blue Category Hint: This category requires a trip down memory lane, specifically to the YA section of your school library. One title became a cultural phenomenon about teenage love.
Purple Category Teaser: Each of these words is hiding something aquatic. Remove one letter from each and you'll find a creature that swims.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (Things Babies Do): BABBLE, CRY, NURSE, TEETHE
The easiest category drops quickly once you stop overthinking. Babies babble, cry, nurse (as in breastfeed), and teethe, four core infant activities that don't require any specialized knowledge.
Green (Modify Deceptively): ALTER, COOK, DOCTOR, FUDGE
This is where the puzzle starts flexing its vocabulary muscles. To "cook the books," "doctor the results," "fudge the numbers," or "alter the evidence" all mean the same thing: tampering with information. The trap? COOK and DOCTOR also look like they belong in a medical/professional category with SURGEON and NURSE, a classic Connections misdirection.
Blue (Judy Blume Books): BLUBBER, DEENIE, FOREVER, SUPERFUDGE
If you spent your adolescence with dog-eared paperbacks, this category snaps into focus immediately. Blubber (the bullying novel), Deenie (the scoliosis story), Forever (the landmark teen romance), and Superfudge (the chaotic family sequel) are four of Judy Blume's most iconic titles. Without that childhood library nostalgia, though, these words look completely random, and SUPERFUDGE could easily get lumped into the Green deception category.
Purple (Fish Minus a Letter): FOUNDER, SALON, SURGEON, TROT
This is the category that separates the pros from the pack. Remove one letter from each word and you get a fish: FOUNDER → FLOUNDER, SALON → SALMON, SURGEON → STURGEON, TROT → TROUT. It's a brilliant linguistic trick that requires you to see past the actual word to its aquatic skeleton. Nobody solves this one on the first pass.
The Verdict
Puzzle #1073 registers as moderate difficulty with a sting in the tail. Yellow falls quickly for anyone who recognizes infant milestones, while Green rewards vocabulary flexibility, but the real trap is the medical red herring.
COOK, DOCTOR, NURSE, and SURGEON all appear in the grid, and it's tempting to build a healthcare category. Don't. NURSE belongs in Yellow (babies nurse), DOCTOR and COOK belong in Green (deceptive tampering), and SURGEON is hiding in Purple as a fish. That misdirection alone has likely burned through more than a few mistake budgets today.
Blue rewards 1980s childhood nostalgia, and Purple, predictably, is the streak-ender. That homophone letter-drop trick won't reveal itself without serious lateral thinking.
Reset and Repeat
Tomorrow's puzzle drops at midnight in your timezone. Until then, reflect on today's performance: did the Judy Blume category click immediately, or did the fish trick sink you?
The beauty lies not in perfection but in training your brain to spot these hidden patterns. Some days it's about vocabulary, other days it's about literary memory, and occasionally it's about removing a single letter to find a fish.
For now, puzzle #1073 is solved. See you at midnight for round #1074.
