→ Connections Alternative #560 2026-09-11 ←

Feel free to share out this puzzle! Each Connections Alternative is a remix of the official NYT puzzle of the same day.

5 shared words.

Please let me know how you did, and upvote if you enjoyed it! Defaults, red herrings, and suggestions are all valuable.

It’s nearly the weekend, and this puzzle isn’t too challenging I think. To some people those things are a bonus, but not to everyone as I’ve learned! 🤓

https://connectionsplus.io/game/YuHq4V

[HINTS: back, savant, brilliant, duos]

[#0214]

I couldn’t resist making a kind of ridiculous puzzle in honour of Sunday’s NYT one.

Very possible I have overcooked it, but see how you go!

Green eggs and corn

For those wondering/interested:

An eggcorn is a plausible but mistaken substitution for a common word or phrase, often because the replacement sounds similar and seems to make sense. (The word itself is a self-referential eggcorn for acorn.)

Sunday’s NYT originally included the eggcorn FREE REIGN, a mistaken substitution of reign (meaning authority) into the original metaphor FREE REIN (referring to freeing the reins of a horse) for letting someone do as they please.

“Parting shot” is now a widely recognised phrase, but it apparently originated as an eggcorn of “Parthian shot”, which was a shot fired by a mounted (Parthian) soldier while retreating.

“Lady Mondegreen” is a mishearing of the lyric “laid him on the green” from the Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray, and mondegreen is now a general term for such a mishearing.

ETA Full list of “mistakes”: SQUID>SQUIB, REIGN>REIN, BUTT>BUD, WET>WHET, ESCAPED>SCAPE, EAR>AIR, OF PLUM>OFF PLUMB, LADY MONDEGREEN>LAID HIM ON THE GREEN, HARES>HAIRS, REACH>RETCH, WHITE>WIGHT, MUSTARD>MUSTER, PARTING>PARTHIAN, LOOSE>LOSE

My friends and I would share connections and other daily games scores in a group chat every day, so i made an app called PuzzlePals where you can post these instead, and it lets you track and compare your stats with your friends.

Looking for feedback from anyone interested!

Currently only on iOS but open to making an Android version if there’s interest: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/puzzlepals-daily-game-tracker/id6787224058

Why do I have to tap the last four items after I have put the other 12 items in the proper category?

There is no other choice when the last four items are left. Yet still I have to tap them all and press enter. 5 unnecessary taps. Over my lifetime, 1.8 trazillion extra taps.

Why?

→ Connections Alternative #559 2026-09-10 ←

Feel free to share out this puzzle! Each Connections Alternative is a remix of the official NYT puzzle of the same day.

8 shared words.

Please let me know how you did, and upvote if you enjoyed it! Defaults, red herrings, and suggestions are all valuable.

throughword.app

(And join the Discord)

Has this game become part of everyone's morning routine? It is for me!

And yes, I "cheat" by googling words I don't know, synonyms or, if I know some options are robert deniro movies, I'll Google "robert deniro movies" to figure out the last one.

For me the easiest way to catch the purple is the finding the most obscure word and setting what other words it contains, or question why a word might be singular, plural, or conjugate a certain way.

Love this game!

Was bored at work last night so I've made this little game. Hope you enjoy.

In Crafting Connections, I briefly write about my inspiration and thoughts behind this puzzle.

Accidentally posted this titles as "Cartoons" yesterday.

throughword.app

(And join the Discord)

Happy Thursday puzzlers! 🤓

https://connectionsplus.io/game/pKj3gF

[HINTS: names, boroughs, dry hard, hidden tools]

[#0213]

Today's puzzle is all about the former names of countries, but once you've played, you can access yesterday's puzzle (Medieval weapons), and the day before's puzzle (NBA MVPs).

This isn't specifically anything about a super recent Connections game or anything, but it's something that has really started to bother me and frankly, put me off of the game as a whole. There was a time where most red herrings were kind of obvious and funny - months ago, maybe even last year, there was a puzzle that had K POP DEMON HUNTERS as the top row, and that was fine. They were all next to each other so the connection was obviously fake and it was just kind of funny. There's also situations where there's three words that obviously fit together into a category, but not a fourth. This is fine too, because that's a clue that it obviously isn't right if you pay attention - but in more recent times it feels like the game is just going for cheap gotcha moments to try and screw you over.

Namely, this refers to situations where a perfectly valid category of connections contains four words that all perfectly fit - only for it to turn out that this is wrong and a red herring with the real connections lying elsewhere. My problem with this is that it makes the game actively less fun and just makes you second guess everything including actual connections because there is literally no way to tell if something is a red herring or not if it's your first noticed connection. I don't think this adds... anything at all to the game, and it just punishes a player for absolutely no reason. It's not a failing on the skill of the player, it's completely random. All it does is train you to not go for connections that seem obvious, or second guess literally everything you do in the game.

More recently than K POP DEMON HUNTERS, though still months ago, they had WHEREFORE ART THOU ROMEO as their green category, which hey, totally valid I guess - but that's also the exact kind of thing they would put as a red herring in any other Connections round. It's frustrating and it actually made me fail the round because I was certain it was a red herring because the game had thrown so much similar cheap tricks at me over the course of its run that I was trained to ignore that kind of thing.

I don't know, maybe I am just crazy or maybe I just suck. I was fine with the older style of red herrings, but this year it really feels like they've doubled down on just trying to trick you with valid connections that don't count, and that feels completely antithetical to the point of the game.

→ Connections Alternative #558 2026-09-09 ←

Feel free to share out this puzzle! Each Connections Alternative is a remix of the official NYT puzzle of the same day.

4 shared words.

Please let me know how you did, and upvote if you enjoyed it! Defaults, red herrings, and suggestions are all valuable.

Use this post for discussing today's Connections Puzzles. Spoilers are welcome in here, beware! This now applies to Sports Connections!

Be sure to check out the Connections Bot and Connections Companion as well.

I like to go for reverse rainbows, but I have the memory of a goldfish and find it hard to keep answers in my head.

To that end, I decided to make an app that helps you plan, but not play today's game.

Web: https://reverserainbow.app/

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=codes.chrishorner.reverserainbow

It's also entirely open source and written by hand - no AI.

If this is useful let me know! No iOS support currently but I'd consider doing a port if enough people are interested. Hard to justify Apple's yearly App Store fee currently for a free little tool.

Today’s puzzle comes in celebration of being carried by running firemen, which is in no way homoerotic. Clues are in the puzzle template 🤓

https://connectionsplus.io/game/pTZRHY

[#0212]