The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

Fans of The New York Times' popular word-grouping game Connections can find the full breakdown of Sunday's puzzle here, including hints, category themes and the complete answer key for Connections #1190, published Sept. 13, 2026.

Connections challenges players to sort 16 seemingly unrelated words into four groups of four, with each group sharing a hidden connection. The puzzle presents categories in ascending order of difficulty, color-coded yellow, green, blue and purple, with yellow typically the most straightforward and purple reserved for the trickiest wordplay or most obscure connections.

Today's four categories

Sunday's puzzle grouped its 16 words into the following categories: Lacking in Firmness, U.S. Presidents, Words That Sound Like Two Letters, and Ending in Elevated Landforms.

The yellow group, Lacking in Firmness, consisted of DROOPY, FLACCID, SAGGING and SLACK, four words describing something limp or without rigidity.

The green group, U.S. Presidents, included CLEVELAND, GARFIELD, GRANT and MADISON, a straightforward category built around the surnames of former American commanders in chief.

The blue group, Words That Sound Like Two Letters, contained EMPTY, EXCESS, KEWPIE and ODIE. Each word, when spoken aloud, phonetically resembles a two-letter combination: EMPTY sounds like "MT," EXCESS sounds like "XS," KEWPIE sounds like "QP," and ODIE sounds like "OD."

The purple group, the day's most challenging category, was Ending in Elevated Landforms, made up of DOUBLESPEAK, HEATHCLIFF, PARAMOUNT and PORRIDGE. Each word conceals a landform term related to height at its end: DOUBLESPEAK ends in "peak," HEATHCLIFF ends in "cliff," PARAMOUNT ends in "mount," and PORRIDGE ends in "ridge."

A puzzle built around a clever misdirection

Puzzle recaps published after Sunday's answers went live noted that the grid was designed to lure players toward an incorrect grouping early on. Several solvers reported initially assuming that GARFIELD referred to the cartoon cat character rather than the 19th-century American president, a mistake compounded by the presence of HEATHCLIFF, another well-known comic-strip cat, elsewhere in the grid.

That overlap led some players to briefly attempt grouping GARFIELD, HEATHCLIFF, DROOPY and CLEVELAND together as a set of cartoon animal characters, a red herring that the puzzle's creators appeared to have built in deliberately. One recap described noticing the word "cliff" embedded at the end of HEATHCLIFF as the moment that unlocked the actual purple category, since it revealed the broader pattern of hidden landform words ending each entry in that group.

Puzzle outlets flagged the absence of a true cartoon-character category as a notable departure from typical Connections misdirection, with one recap specifically calling out that Sunday's grid included "no cartoon animals today" as its actual answer set, despite multiple words that might otherwise suggest one.

Hints offered ahead of the reveal

Before publishing full answers, several outlets released layered hints designed to guide players without immediately spoiling the puzzle. Early clues described the yellow category as relating to "limp or flimsy" qualities, the green category as pointing toward "commander in chief," the blue category as something solvers should "sound out" to understand, and the purple category as connected to "high altitude" imagery.

Other outlets offered slightly different phrasing for the same categories, describing the yellow group as relating to "words that describe the same physical state," the green group as tied to "leaders of a certain country often favoured by Connections," the blue group as words that "phonetically, could be much shorter," and the purple group as containing "hidden landscape words."

A puzzle with a Connections Bot rating of 4 out of 5

According to difficulty ratings compiled using the New York Times' own Connections Bot scoring system, Sunday's puzzle registered a 4 out of 5 on the platform's difficulty scale, reflecting the added challenge created by the Garfield-Heathcliff misdirection built into the grid's presidential and landform categories.

How Connections works

Connections has become one of the Times' most popular daily word games since its debut in 2023, trailing only Wordle in overall popularity among the paper's puzzle offerings, according to recaps tracking the game's ongoing user engagement. Players select four words at a time from the 16-word grid and submit them as a guess; correct groupings lock into place with their designated color, while incorrect guesses count against a limit of four total mistakes before the puzzle ends unsolved.

The game's structure, moving from simple, concrete categories in yellow up through increasingly abstract or wordplay-driven categories in green, blue and finally purple, has made it a daily habit for many puzzle enthusiasts who track personal win streaks similarly to how many players approach Wordle.

Where to find daily coverage

A range of outlets, including Parade, TechRadar, Forbes, GameDaily, Try Hard Guides and TheGamer, have built dedicated recurring coverage around Connections, offering daily hint breakdowns alongside full-answer reveals for readers who want either a nudge or an immediate solution. Most of these guides follow a consistent format, offering general category hints first before revealing individual example words and, finally, the complete four-category answer key.

Looking ahead

A new Connections puzzle will be published Monday, continuing the game's daily rotation of categories spanning wordplay, pop culture, history and language patterns. Players looking to avoid spoilers for future puzzles are generally advised to complete each day's grid before checking hint sites, since most outlets publish hints and complete answers together within the same daily post shortly after each puzzle becomes available to solve.

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