The Sunday edition of NYT Connections arrives with puzzle #1190, serving up a grid that rewards flexible definitions, historical recall, close listening, and sharp attention to word endings.
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 #1190:
PORRIDGE | GARFIELD | DROOPY | EMPTY
HEATHCLIFF | EXCESS | GRANT | SLACK
ODIE | PARAMOUNT | SAGGING | MADISON
FLACCID | KEWPIE | CLEVELAND | DOUBLESPEAK
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Think about a physical quality that an object, material, or posture can lose.
Green Category Clue: Read some entries as proper names, then look for a shared role in public life.
Blue Category Hint: Say the candidates aloud and listen for compact sounds hiding inside full words.
Purple Category Teaser: Inspect the edges of the longer entries, since the connection appears in the same position each time.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (Lacking In Firmness): DROOPY, FLACCID, SAGGING, SLACK
DROOPY, FLACCID, SAGGING, and SLACK all describe something lacking firmness or tension.
DROOPY also tempts a character-based grouping beside GARFIELD, ODIE, and HEATHCLIFF, making it the yellow word most likely to wander.
Green (U.S. Presidents): CLEVELAND, GARFIELD, GRANT, MADISON
CLEVELAND, GARFIELD, GRANT, and MADISON are surnames of U.S. presidents.
GARFIELD is the deliberate troublemaker here because it also sits naturally beside ODIE and HEATHCLIFF as a familiar comics name.
Blue (Words That Sound Like Two Letters): EMPTY, EXCESS, KEWPIE, ODIE
EMPTY sounds like M-T, EXCESS like X-S, KEWPIE like Q-P, and ODIE like O-D. Each full word therefore sounds like a spoken pair of letters.
Purple (Ending In Elevated Landforms): DOUBLESPEAK, HEATHCLIFF, PARAMOUNT, PORRIDGE
Each purple answer ends with an elevated landform: doublesPEAK ends in PEAK, heathCLIFF ends in CLIFF, paraMOUNT ends in MOUNT, and porRIDGE ends in RIDGE.
The Verdict
Yellow should fall first because DROOPY, FLACCID, SAGGING, and SLACK share an immediate descriptive quality.
The real trap lives among DROOPY, GARFIELD, ODIE, and HEATHCLIFF, whose character-name overlap cuts across all four intended groups.
Purple is the streak-decider because its landform fragments are concealed at the ends of otherwise unrelated words, while blue offers a cleaner route once the entries are spoken aloud.
Reset and Repeat
The grid resets tomorrow, but today's nested PEAK, CLIFF, MOUNT, and RIDGE trick is worth carrying forward as a reminder to inspect word endings closely.
For now, puzzle #1190 is solved. See you at midnight for the next round.
