The Friday edition of NYT Connections arrives with puzzle #1153, serving up a grid that rewards a steady household eye before it rewards cleverness, with everyday objects, things that drop the temperature, and a bit of building hardware all elbowing for the same sixteen tiles. Nothing here demands trivia you do not already own.
The trouble starts in the corner where meaning stops mattering. One group wants you to quit reading these entries as words and start reading them as beginnings, and until that switch flips, the board looks messier than it is.
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 #1153:
JACKPOT | MOTOR | SNOW | JAR
WICK | SUNDAE | RAMBO | BUTTONS
TOMATILLO | SHAFT | WAX | BUCKYBALL
LIQUID NITROGEN | FRAGRANCE | CABLES | REFRIGERATOR
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Picture something you light on a quiet evening, then take it apart in your head. Every piece that goes into that object counts, from the container it sits in to the scent it throws.
Green Category Clue: Think temperature and nothing else. Some of these are engineered to chill, one falls from the sky, and one shows up in a bowl with a spoon.
Blue Category Hint: Look for the machinery that carries you between floors of a tall building. You want the mechanical guts and the vertical space they run through, not the ride itself.
Purple Category Teaser: Ignore what these four entries actually mean, because their definitions are pure decoration. Read only the opening letters of each one and you will find a small barnyard hiding in plain sight.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (Components Of A Candle): FRAGRANCE, JAR, WAX, WICK
FRAGRANCE, JAR, WAX and WICK are the components of a candle, covering the scent, the vessel, the fuel and the burning thread. FRAGRANCE and JAR are the giveaways here, since neither one has a second home anywhere on this board.
WICK is the one that can lead you astray, because it doubles as the surname of a famous action movie hitman and sits on the same grid as RAMBO and SHAFT. That is a genuine trap, not a coincidence you can dismiss.
Green (Cold Things): LIQUID NITROGEN, REFRIGERATOR, SNOW, SUNDAE
LIQUID NITROGEN, REFRIGERATOR, SNOW and SUNDAE are simply cold things, and that plainness is what makes them slippery. Two are man made cooling agents, one is weather, and one is dessert, so the group holds together by sensation rather than by category.
REFRIGERATOR is the leak in the dam, since a fridge runs on a MOTOR and plugs in with a cord, which nudges solvers toward the hardware group. WAX also flirts with cold as something that hardens when it cools, but it belongs to the candle.
Blue (Parts Of An Elevator): BUTTONS, CABLES, MOTOR, SHAFT
BUTTONS, CABLES, MOTOR and SHAFT are parts of an elevator, running from the panel you press to the steel lines, the drive and the vertical space the car travels through. Once you accept that this group is about a machine rather than a place, the four snap into line.
SHAFT carries the loudest decoy energy, since it is also a landmark detective film title alongside RAMBO on this grid. CABLES and MOTOR pull toward REFRIGERATOR too, so this group asks you to hold three overlaps in your head at once.
Purple (Starting With Male Animals): BUCKYBALL, JACKPOT, RAMBO, TOMATILLO
BUCKYBALL, JACKPOT, RAMBO and TOMATILLO all start with a male animal. A buck is a male deer, a jack is a male donkey, a ram is a male sheep, and a tom is a male cat or turkey, and each of those three or four letter words is buried at the front of a longer, unrelated term.
The meanings of the full entries are deliberate noise, spanning a carbon molecule, a windfall, a movie hero and a green fruit. RAMBO is the sharpest decoy of the four, because it shares this board with SHAFT and WICK and begs to be read as a film title instead of a fragment.
The Verdict
The candle group falls first and falls cleanly. FRAGRANCE and JAR have no rival reading anywhere on this board, and once they anchor, WAX and WICK follow without much argument.
The real trap lives between the elevator hardware and the cold things, where REFRIGERATOR shares this board with MOTOR and CABLES and looks like an appliance built from exactly those parts. A second trap runs through the action heroes, since RAMBO, SHAFT and WICK could pass for a group of their own until you notice that leaves you a word short.
Streaks live or die on the male animal group, and BUCKYBALL is the key that turns it. That entry has no plausible home among candles, cold things or elevator parts, so spotting it early tells you a hidden fragment rule is running and pulls JACKPOT, RAMBO and TOMATILLO out of the mess with it.
Reset and Repeat
Puzzle 1153 is a good reminder that when a word refuses to belong anywhere, the answer is usually hiding in its first few letters rather than its meaning. BUCKYBALL and TOMATILLO were doing all their work at the front end.
The board resets tomorrow with sixteen fresh tiles and a new trick from Wyna Liu, so carry the habit forward and read the openings before you commit. See you back here for the next one.
For now, puzzle #1153 is solved. See you at midnight for the next round.
