The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

Puzzle fans looking to sort out Tuesday's New York Times Connections grid have a mix of everyday objects, city landmarks and clever visual wordplay to untangle in puzzle #1150. Below are spoiler-free hints for anyone still working through today's board, followed by the full confirmed solution for those ready to check their answers.

What is NYT Connections?

Connections is a daily word-association puzzle published by The New York Times, in which players are presented with a 4-by-4 grid of 16 seemingly unrelated words and asked to sort them into four hidden groups of four. Each group shares a common theme, ranging from straightforward categories to trickier wordplay-based connections. The puzzle, created in 2023 and overseen by the Times' crossword editor, Wyna Liu, has become one of the paper's most popular daily games alongside Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword.

Categories are typically color-coded by difficulty, running from the most straightforward grouping to the most conceptually challenging, with the trickiest category often relying on wordplay, double meanings or unexpected associations between words that appear to have nothing in common at first glance. Part of the puzzle's appeal, and its difficulty, comes from the Times' deliberate use of overlapping words designed to mislead players into grouping items incorrectly before the true categories become clear.

Hints for today's puzzle

For players who want a nudge before jumping straight to the answers, here are some spoiler-light clues for each of today's four categories:

  • One category involves items that are long and cylindrical in shape.
  • Another focuses on sights closely associated with New York City.
  • A third groups together objects and instruments that share a common mechanical feature: pedals.
  • The final and trickiest category ties together things that form a distinctive V shape.

If those hints aren't quite enough, a few additional pointers: think of something you might chew on the sidewalk, a familiar city bird, an instrument played with the feet as well as the hands, and a hand gesture recognizable around the world.

Today's Connections answers

For those ready to see the full solution, here is how puzzle #1150 breaks down for Tuesday, August 4, 2026:

Long Cylindrical Things: Cigarette, Foam Roller, Pool Noodle, Pretzel Rod

Iconic NYC Sights: Bodega, Pigeon, Subway Station, Taxi Cab

Things With Pedals: Piano, Sewing Machine, Swan Boat, Unicycle

V-Shaped Things: Angle Bracket, Chevron, Goose Formation, Peace Sign

The puzzle's most challenging group is likely to be the V-Shaped Things category, which requires players to move beyond literal object categories and instead recognize a shared visual shape across items as varied as a hand gesture, a punctuation mark, a flying formation of geese and a chevron pattern. That kind of abstract, shape-based grouping is a hallmark of Connections' hardest category on any given day, often tripping up players who initially try to sort those words by what they are rather than what they resemble.

The Things With Pedals category also carries a bit of a twist, linking together items that don't obviously belong in the same group at first glance. A piano and a sewing machine share pedals used for different mechanical purposes, while a swan boat, the pedal-powered paddle boats found on lakes in parks, and a unicycle round out a category built around a shared physical feature rather than a shared purpose or setting.

Strategy for solving Connections

Players tackling Connections are often advised to start with the category they feel most confident about, typically the most literal or straightforward grouping, before moving on to trickier associations. Because the puzzle intentionally seeds decoy words designed to fit multiple categories, jumping to conclusions on category groupings can be costly, since an incorrect guess can quickly use up the limited number of mistakes allowed before the puzzle is considered unsolved for the day.

A common approach involves first identifying words that only seem to fit one obvious category, then working outward from there, saving the most ambiguous or abstract-seeming words for last. In today's puzzle, several items could plausibly overlap between categories at first glance, for instance, a pretzel rod might initially seem more closely tied to a food-based group rather than a shape-based one, while a taxi cab could be mistaken for fitting a category built around modes of transportation rather than New York City sights specifically.

A companion puzzle: Connections Sports Edition

Alongside the main Connections puzzle, the Times also publishes a separate Connections: Sports Edition, developed in partnership with The Athletic, which challenges players to apply knowledge of baseball, basketball, football and hockey to a similarly structured grid. Tuesday's sports edition, puzzle #680, tested players on categories built around team names, franchise history and sports terminology, offering a parallel challenge for fans of both word games and sports trivia.

Why Connections has become a daily habit

Since its debut, Connections has grown into one of the Times' most widely played daily puzzles, prized for the way it rewards lateral thinking over rote vocabulary knowledge. Unlike Wordle, which tests spelling and letter placement, Connections leans on pattern recognition and cultural familiarity, often requiring players to reconsider their first instinct about a word's meaning once a puzzle's true structure starts to emerge.

The puzzle resets daily at midnight local time, with a new 16-word grid and four categories waiting for players each morning. For those who missed Tuesday's puzzle or want to track their progress over time, the Times maintains an archive of past Connections puzzles, allowing solvers to catch up on previous days' boards or revisit puzzles they weren't able to finish.

With today's #1150 solved, players can look ahead to Wednesday's edition, #1151, which will bring an entirely new set of 16 words and four fresh categories to untangle.

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