The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

NEW YORK — The New York Times' Connections puzzle on Thursday mixed shoe styles, garden flowers and an unusual set of teardrop-shaped objects, but it was a clever spelling trick involving liquor that gave many players the most trouble.

Connections asks players to sort 16 words into four groups of four that share a common thread. Every puzzle has just one solution, and some words can have double meanings, so figuring out the answers can be tricky. The groups are color-coded yellow, green, blue and purple, in order of difficulty from least to most.

Players can make up to four mistakes before the game ends. Hints come first below, followed by the full answers.

Today's word list

The 16 words on the Nov. 5 board are RAINDROP, ROSE, WHISKER, KITTEN, GIG, PEAR, SPIKE, NARCISSUS, WEDGE, RUN, LOTUS, UVULA, BRANDO, ANEMONE, SPEEDBAG and PLATFORM.

How hard is it?

Reviewers rated Thursday's grid as challenging. TechRadar's puzzle writer gave the game a "Hard" rating.

Watch out for decoys

Several words on the grid could fit more than one category. PLATFORM, ROSE and RUN each have more than one meaning.

ROSE, for example, could suggest a past-tense verb or a color, while RUN might call to mind a stocking flaw or athletic activity. PLATFORM could refer to a train station or a political stage before players realize it fits elsewhere.

Some entries are simply unusual. WHISKER, BRANDO and GIG look out of place among the more straightforward words, which is often a sign they belong to the purple group.

Hints for each group

For players who want a light nudge, here are clues for each category.

The yellow group involves footwear. Today's yellow category relates to footwear. Think about what lifts the back of a shoe.

The green group comes from the garden. The green category relates to colorful additions to a garden. Some of the words may be less familiar than others.

The blue group is about shape. The blue category relates to objects that taper. Picture something round at the bottom and narrow at the top.

The purple group is the hardest. The purple category relates to spirits with a slight spelling makeover.

Today's categories

Players who need more help can check the full category names before seeing the answers.

The categories for Nov. 5 are Kinds of Heels in yellow, Flowers in green, Teardrop-Shaped Things in blue and Liquors With Last Letters Changed in purple.

Today's Connections answers

Spoiler warning: the full solutions follow.

The yellow group, Kinds of Heels, is KITTEN, PLATFORM, SPIKE and WEDGE. Each describes a familiar style of shoe heel, from the low kitten heel to the chunky platform.

The green group, Flowers, is ANEMONE, LOTUS, NARCISSUS and ROSE. The narcissus is also known as the daffodil, while the lotus is an aquatic plant often associated with Asian art and religion.

The blue group, Teardrop-Shaped Things, is PEAR, RAINDROP, SPEEDBAG and UVULA. The speed bag is the small punching bag boxers use for rhythm training, while the uvula is the small fleshy piece hanging at the back of the throat.

The purple group, Liquors With Last Letters Changed, is BRANDO, GIG, RUN and WHISKER. Swapping the final letter of each reveals a spirit: BRANDO becomes brandy, GIG becomes gin, RUN becomes rum and WHISKER becomes whiskey.

Strategy tips

Thursday's puzzle rewarded players who started with the most concrete categories. The heels and flowers groups were the most straightforward, especially once players recognized KITTEN and SPIKE as shoe terms rather than an animal and a sharp point.

A useful approach in Connections is to look for words that fit only one category. UVULA and SPEEDBAG, for instance, have almost no use outside the teardrop shape group, making them reliable anchors.

The purple group shows why odd-looking words deserve close attention. When entries such as BRANDO or WHISKER seem unrelated to anything else, try changing, removing or adding a single letter to see whether a hidden word appears.

Players should also be cautious with flexible words. ROSE could easily be mistaken for something other than a flower, and RUN could be tested in several groups before players discover it belongs with the liquors.

About the game

Connections is a web-based daily puzzle The New York Times launched in 2023, written by the paper's crossword editor, Wyna Liu.

A new puzzle appears at midnight in each player's time zone, which means some people are always playing the current day's game while others are still on the previous one.

The next Connections puzzle, No. 1244, will be released Friday.