The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

NEW YORK — The New York Times' Connections puzzle on Sunday combined gym talk and salon services with a clever sound-alike trick, and the hardest group sent many players back to the vegetable aisle.

Connections asks players to sort 16 words into four groups of four. The groups are color-coded yellow, green, blue and purple, in order of difficulty from least to most. Players get four mistakes, and using them all ends the game.

Hints come first, followed by the full answers.

Today's word list

The 16 words on Sunday's board are CUT, LEAK, CONTEXT, CARAT, BUILT, BLOWOUT, CLARITY, CHARRED, COLOR, KORN, INSIGHT, EXTENSIONS, RIPPED, TRIM, JACKED and PERSPECTIVE.

How hard is it?

Sunday's grid was rated challenging. TechRadar's puzzle writer rated it "Hard" and finished with three mistakes.

That reviewer was misled by one word in particular. The writer could not get past KORN as the name of the band and kept looking for a music connection.

Watch out for decoys

CUT, COLOR and LEAK each have more than one meaning, so players should make sure all four words share the same connection before submitting.

CUT is the biggest trap, since it fits both a gym description and a salon service. TRIM can also seem to belong in more than one place.

Hints for each group

GameDaily offered these hints: Gym Goals, How To Get Your Looks Done, Arises From Wisdom and Sounds Like Organic Produce.

For a slightly stronger nudge, Forbes suggested thinking of strong, barber shop, understanding and sounds like healthy eating.

Today's categories

The four groups are Muscular, Hair Salon Services, Things That Help Make Sense of a Situation and Vegetable Homophones.

Today's Connections answers

Spoiler warning: the full solutions follow.

The yellow group, Muscular, is BUILT, CUT, JACKED and RIPPED.

The green group, Hair Salon Services, is BLOWOUT, COLOR, EXTENSIONS and TRIM.

The blue group, Things That Help Make Sense of a Situation, is CLARITY, CONTEXT, INSIGHT and PERSPECTIVE.

The purple group, Vegetable Homophones, is CARAT, CHARRED, KORN and LEAK. Said aloud, they sound like carrot, chard, corn and leek.

Strategy tips

The blue group was probably the safest start, since CLARITY, CONTEXT, INSIGHT and PERSPECTIVE have little overlap with the other categories.

The purple group shows why spelling oddities deserve attention. When a word looks misspelled or out of place, such as KORN, try saying it out loud.

Once the vegetables are found, sorting CUT and TRIM becomes much easier: CUT belongs with the gym words, and TRIM goes with the salon.

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. Connections No. 1247 arrives Monday.