The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

NEW YORK — Monday's New York Times Connections puzzle, No. 1233, took a seasonal turn ahead of Halloween. Its trickiest group hid classic horror movie titles behind a one-letter change.

Hints come first for players who want a nudge. The full answers follow further down.

How Connections works

Connections shows a grid of 16 words. Players sort them into four groups of four that share a common thread. Each group has a color that signals its difficulty:

Yellow: the most straightforward Green: moderate Blue: harder Purple: the trickiest, often built on wordplay

Players can make four mistakes before the game ends. If a guess gets three of the four words right, the game shows a "One away" message.

Monday's 16 words

The grid for Oct. 26, 2026:

CHILLING, MANAGING, NOT BAD, SAME OLD, PRAYER, WELCOME, WRESTLING, YOGA, HERDING, HOUND, SPORTING, TOY, HALLOWEEK, HOSTED, JAWN, PSYCHS

Hints for each group

Yellow: What you might say when a friend asks how you're doing. Green: Things you might lay on the floor or roll out. Blue: Think of how the American Kennel Club organizes dogs at a show. Purple: Scary movies, but each one is slightly off at the end.

The red herrings

Several words looked like they fit more than one group, a standard Connections tactic.

CHILLING seemed to belong with the horror theme, since a scary film is often called chilling. In fact, it was part of the group of casual replies to "How are you?" WELCOME could pass for a greeting, which made it tempting to group with the conversational replies. It belonged with the mats. WRESTLING and SPORTING both suggested athletics, raising the possibility of a sports group. Only one was a type of mat. The other was a dog breed category. HOSTED and PSYCHS are real English words, so they don't look misspelled at first glance. JAWN, a well-known piece of Philadelphia slang, is also a real word. HALLOWEEK was the giveaway that something odd was going on.

Today's Connections answers

Yellow — RESPONSES TO "HOW ARE YOU?": CHILLING, MANAGING, NOT BAD, SAME OLD

All four are casual, everyday replies to the familiar greeting.

Green — KINDS OF MATS: PRAYER, WELCOME, WRESTLING, YOGA

Prayer mats, welcome mats, wrestling mats and yoga mats are all common floor coverings with specific uses.

Blue — AKC DOG BREED GROUPS: HERDING, HOUND, SPORTING, TOY

The American Kennel Club sorts recognized breeds into seven groups: Sporting, Hound, Working, Terrier, Toy, Non-Sporting and Herding. Four of them appeared in Monday's grid.

Purple — HORROR MOVIES WITH LAST LETTER CHANGED: HALLOWEEK, HOSTED, JAWN, PSYCHS

Change the last letter of each word and you get a horror classic:

HALLOWEEK becomes "Halloween." HOSTED becomes "Hostel." JAWN becomes "Jaws." PSYCHS becomes "Psycho."

The category landed less than a week before Halloween, which falls on Saturday.

Solving tips

Regular Connections players often use a few strategies:

Look for words that don't look right. A word that isn't real, such as HALLOWEEK, is usually a sign of wordplay in the purple group. Be wary of mood words. Adjectives such as CHILLING can point toward a theme they don't belong to. Use your mistakes wisely. A "One away" message is useful information. Swap one word at a time instead of starting over. Shuffle the board. The shuffle button can break up visual patterns and reveal new links.

On Monday, solving the mats or dog groups early would have cleared away the sports-themed decoys. Spotting HALLOWEEK as "Halloween" could have unlocked the purple group and kept CHILLING out of it.

Other New York Times games

Connections is part of the Times' daily lineup alongside Wordle, Strands, Spelling Bee and The Mini Crossword. The Times also publishes Connections: Sports Edition, a separate puzzle built around athletes, teams and sports terms.

The Wordle answer for Monday, Oct. 26, was GEEKY.

A new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight local time.