May 12, 2024, was the toughest, most stumbling-breathing connection puzzle ever
I love connection. Also, I hate connections. NYT’s connecting puzzle makes me feel clever when I solve it. (CNET posts daily answers Connections, Wordle, Strands, Connections: Sports Edition, and Mini Crossword if you want Mini Crossword. )
The New York Times announced the connection in beta in June 2023, and soon Second game played The era is behind only the powerful Word. The puzzle offers 16 words and must be tailored to four four groups. It throws you lots of red herring. Words can fit into multiple groups, but there is only one solution where all words can find a group.
Apparently it’s called an online word game tool Word unscrambler (Give me what it’s doing!), and the people behind this site were looking for the phrase “Connections Hint” from January 1st to December 31st, 2024. I analyzed Google search.
“Americans search 2.4 million connection tips a month,” a spokesperson for the site said. “Connection tips are searched 2.4 times more than Wordle tips.”
The ultimate, toughest, brain-connected connection puzzle? According to Google’s search, it was May 12, 2024. An unsolved puzzle appears at the top of this story, with the answer below.
I understand why it’s difficult. There are many three letter words, four of which are classified as acronyms, two of which fit perfectly into different categories.
Screenshot of the completed NYT connection puzzle on May 12, 2024. This puzzle was judged to be the toughest of 2024 by Google analysis on the site.
And while there are many words that can be entered into the animal category (Kid! Mule!), the game is placed in other categories.
As you can see, categories are playfully fun (children, needle, rib, bullying), beef cuts (chuck, frank, loin, round), acronyms (MIA, OMG, PIN, RAM), and place names from cocktails Cocktails (Libre, Mama, Mule, Sling).
According to the analysis, the second toughest connection puzzle only came on May 5, 2024 the day before. Bagels (eggs, all, plain, poppies) contribute to the film (actions, direct, produce, writing) and the starting point for monsters (frank, mama, vamp, were).
The term Unscrambler site also sorts searches by state, and on May 12, 2024, the puzzle broke the toughness list in 36 states.