The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

Puzzle fans working through Tuesday's New York Times Connections game have their solution: puzzle #1129, released July 14, 2026, sorted 16 words into four groups spanning synonyms for a contract, computer edit menu commands, types of baskets and a clever visual category built around symbols commonly represented by arrows, according to multiple outlets tracking the daily puzzle.

Connections challenges players to organize 16 seemingly unrelated words into four hidden groups of four, with each group linked by a shared theme, color-coded by difficulty from yellow, the easiest, through green, blue and finally purple, traditionally the most difficult and often built around wordplay or non-verbal connections rather than straightforward meaning. Players select four words at a time and submit a guess, with the game indicating correct groupings by color and offering a "one away" warning when a guess is close but not quite right. Four incorrect guesses end the puzzle.

Tuesday's yellow category centered on synonyms for a contract, grouping the words agreement, bargain, deal and understanding, all terms describing a formal or informal arrangement reached between parties. The green group asked players to identify common edit menu options found in most software applications, linking copy, cut, delete and paste, a set of commands familiar to anyone who has worked within a standard computer text-editing interface.

The blue category, one level up in difficulty, gathered different kinds of baskets, connecting Easter, grocery, laundry and picnic, each pairing with the word "basket" to form a recognizable everyday phrase. The puzzle's purple group, traditionally its trickiest, required players to identify concepts commonly symbolized with arrows rather than described through a shared verbal meaning, linking recycling, shuffle, this side up and U-turn. According to puzzle guide NerdsChalk, that final category relied on visual rather than verbal logic. "The connection is visual rather than verbal. Each item is commonly represented by arrows. Some appear on signs or packaging," the guide noted, pointing to how each of the four concepts is typically depicted through arrow-based iconography, whether on a recycling symbol, a shuffle button on a music player, a shipping label reading "this side up," or a road sign indicating a permitted U-turn.

One puzzle guide covering Tuesday's board described the overall design as blending practical, everyday vocabulary with more conceptual, symbol-based thinking. "Today's grid featured a combination of practical everyday vocabulary and conceptual connections," NerdsChalk wrote. "Solvers likely spotted one or two categories quickly, but distinguishing between similar meanings and identifying the symbol-based group may have taken extra thought. The puzzle rewarded careful observation and attention to context." The same source offered a general strategy tip for approaching similarly structured puzzles going forward. "The 14 July 2026 Connections puzzle balances straightforward action words with trickier conceptual links, making it satisfying once everything clicks," the guide wrote, advising players to "lock in obvious verb groups early, then examine remaining words for structural patterns or shared cultural references."

Connections was developed internally by the Times and rolled out widely in 2023 following a beta testing period, building on the momentum generated by Wordle, which the paper had acquired the previous year. Since its full launch, Connections has become one of the more popular entries in the Times' expanding games section, which also includes Wordle, Strands, the Mini Crossword, Sudoku and Pips, part of a broader strategy by the paper to build a suite of daily puzzles that keeps readers returning to its platform consistently.

The category names themselves remain hidden from players at the outset of each puzzle, requiring solvers to infer each group's connecting theme purely from the 16 scrambled words presented on the board. That design choice has made the game notably prone to misdirection, since certain words are often deliberately chosen because they could plausibly fit into more than one category before a puzzle's true structure becomes clear. Tuesday's board illustrated that tendency well, given that words like "deal" and "cut" carry multiple everyday meanings that could have initially pointed solvers toward the wrong grouping before the puzzle's true categories became apparent.

The NYT's own official guidance for tackling Connections encourages players to start with the categories they feel most confident about, think through alternate meanings or uses of ambiguous words, and pay attention to shared word endings or suffixes that might hint at a hidden pattern, strategies that align closely with the kind of layered thinking Tuesday's board rewarded, particularly given the shift required to solve the visually oriented purple group.

Beyond the standard Connections puzzle, the Times has also continued expanding into sports-specific content through its ownership of The Athletic, with Connections: Sports Edition offering a spinoff format that resets daily at midnight Eastern time alongside the main puzzle, asking players to group 16 sports-related terms into four themed categories drawn from teams, players and league-specific vocabulary.

For players who prefer working through Connections gradually rather than seeing the full solution at once, most puzzle-tracking outlets offer graduated hint systems that follow the game's own difficulty ladder, presenting clues from the yellow category through purple in ascending order of difficulty. That structure allows players to request a partial nudge, such as a thematic hint for the purple category alone, without necessarily spoiling the remaining groups if they would still like to solve those independently.

Access to the daily Connections puzzle, along with Wordle and the Mini Crossword, remains free through the Times' games app and website, while the publication's full puzzle archive, spanning more than 1,100 previous Connections boards, requires a Times Games subscription to access. The paper has continued to build out tools surrounding its puzzle offerings in recent years, including performance-tracking features that let players monitor their solving statistics over time, similar in spirit to the Wordle Bot analysis tool available for that game.

Wednesday's Connections puzzle is scheduled to reset at midnight Eastern time, continuing the game's daily rotation. Players looking for hints ahead of the next release can typically expect updated guides to appear across puzzle-tracking sites within hours of each new puzzle going live, following the same category-by-category format used to break down Tuesday's grid.

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