The Wednesday edition of NYT Connections arrives with puzzle #1193, serving up a grid that rewards close attention to word edges, literary recall, and one especially playful piece of letter surgery.
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 #1193:
FRANK-N-FURTER | LATIN | CLINK | PENNYWISE
WADSWORTH | NICKELODEON | BORAT | LONG JOHN SILVER
ST. VINCENT | STEAM IRON | WIDENER | DIMENSION
QUARTERBACK | CARLOS | MARIGOLD | BARRETT
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Inspect how the entries finish, since their final letters matter more than their complete meanings.
Green Category Clue: Shift your attention to the beginnings, with a small monetary angle in mind.
Blue Category Hint: A literary roll call will help here, but the crucial names occupy the space between first and last.
Purple Category Teaser: Look for a letter-level transformation with a culinary destination.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (Ending In Metal Elements): LATIN, LONG JOHN SILVER, MARIGOLD, STEAM IRON
ENDING IN METAL ELEMENTS collects LATIN, LONG JOHN SILVER, MARIGOLD, and STEAM IRON. Their endings are TIN, SILVER, GOLD, and IRON, respectively.
NICKELODEON creates the sharpest crossover because nickel is also a metal, but it appears at the beginning and belongs to the coin-based group.
Green (Starting With U.S. Coins): DIMENSION, NICKELODEON, PENNYWISE, QUARTERBACK
STARTING WITH U.S. COINS contains DIMENSION, NICKELODEON, PENNYWISE, and QUARTERBACK. Each opens with DIME, NICKEL, PENNY, or QUARTER.
NICKELODEON again supplies the deliberate trap, since NICKEL fits both monetary and elemental territory. Its placement is settled by the opening-position pattern.
Blue (Poets' Middle Names): BARRETT, CARLOS, ST. VINCENT, WADSWORTH
POETS' MIDDLE NAMES links BARRETT, CARLOS, ST. VINCENT, and WADSWORTH to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Carlos Williams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The red herring is their flexibility as standalone names: CARLOS resembles an ordinary first name, while BARRETT and WADSWORTH read naturally as surnames, inviting a looser name-based set.
Purple (Sausages Plus A Letter): BORAT, CLINK, FRANK-N-FURTER, WIDENER
SAUSAGES PLUS A LETTER turns BRAT into BORAT, LINK into CLINK, FRANKFURTER into FRANK-N-FURTER when punctuation is set aside, and WIENER into WIDENER. The added letters are O, C, N, and D.
BORAT and FRANK-N-FURTER strongly suggest a screen-character set alongside PENNYWISE and LONG JOHN SILVER, making that four-word overlap the grid's most convincing decoy.
The Verdict
The coin openings offer the cleanest first foothold, while the element endings become clear once position matters more than whole-word meaning.
The real trap is the apparent character quartet of BORAT, FRANK-N-FURTER, PENNYWISE, and LONG JOHN SILVER. It looks coherent until the sausage transformation exposes the tighter construction.
The literary group tests recall, but the final letter insertion is the streak-deciding group because every transformation must land exactly.
Reset and Repeat
Today's best flourish is the sausage trick, especially the punctuation-assisted transformation behind FRANK-N-FURTER. Reset the grid tomorrow and look again for the tiny structural detail hiding beneath the loudest surface connection.
For now, puzzle #1193 is solved. See you at midnight for the next round.
