Today's NYT Connections Groups Are Shockingly Easy If You Don't Get Tripped Up On "Compound"

Welcome to the weekend, puzzlers! And what better way to start the weekend with a nice short puzzle? Challenging, but short. There are advantages to not being sucked into a weeks-long epic slog of a game. 

And with that, your daily sweet 16 words are back and ready for your best grouping efforts. The popular Connections brainbuster from The New York Times has four groups of words with a shared theme or commonality, but they’re shuffled into random order for you to figure out. Remember to take your time—many words have multiple meanings, so think twice before you click.

Today’s words: QUALITY, BIRTH, HOUSE, PLANT, REMOTE, LODGE, HYBRID, COMPOUND, CROSS, CRUISE, STICK, HOTEL, TOKEN, BLEND, WEDGE, and DEED.

Above is your visual hint for today’s yellow group. Maybe it’s right on the money for you? If you’re still scratching your head, well, hate to tell you, but yellow is the easiest group.

Need a verbal clue? Could be anything from chocolate milk (no, it does not come from brown cows) to your work week. Yes, that’s vague, but this one wasn’t that hard.

Tapping out? There was no Times chicanery involved with this group—no words that easily could have slid into another group. A nice basic start to the weekend for you!

Today’s yellow group answer is Composite and its words are BLEND, COMPOUND, CROSS, and HYBRID.

There’s your visual hint for today’s blue group. It might be your eureka! moment. (No, sorry, that was not a clue.) Or it might not have helped at all. Hey, we try.

Time for the verbal clue: This group could have included dice, railroads, and money. Also instructions, which nobody ever reads.

No? This was the “process of elimination” group for us today, but once we saw the result, it was a serious “d’oh” moment. Shoulda been easier!

Today’s blue group answer is Items in a Monopoly Box and its words are DEED, HOTEL, HOUSE, and TOKEN.

We’re going to go out on a limb and say this is a pretty powerful visual clue. Will it get you to the finish line? That’s the catch—you still have to find the right words.

Need the verbal clue too? Maybe it’s because we slept funny and our back feels like it has something….oops, wait, that’s too much of a spoiler.

Give up? Yeah, think pain. Unfortunately that’s the quickest path to this solution. When you get that pain in your back and it feels like something’s lodged in there. Or stuck….

Today’s green group answer is Embed and its words are LODGE, PLANT, STICK, and WEDGE.

The purple group is the hardest one, so don’t kick yourself if this visual hint does not immediately take you to the promised land.

Here’s your verbal clue: It’s the “missing word” category of the day. Add the same word to each of these and, voila! Purple group conquered.

Crying uncle? This was kind of purplish in terms of difficulty, but we’ve seen worse. And we’ll probably get worse tomorrow!

Today’s purple group answer is ___ Control and its words are BIRTH, CRUISE, QUALITY, and REMOTE.

We’ll see if the Times takes it easier on us tomorrow—check back then and find out!