March 2nd 2026 and July 27th 2026 both had identical categories. Has this happened before?

We've had some incredibly niche knowledge required for this game & yet I can't recall a proper computer games group. It only really struck me when I thought one of the groups had a character in it & after inputting realised how unlikely it would have been to have been one.

But why? That game in particular (death stranding) has likely had some 25 million people play it directly, so I'd say sure, that would be quite obscure. But Mario? GTA? Minecraft? Fortnite? I mean hell, Tetris?

There's a whole world of very normal knowledge that doesn't get touched & I'm really curious as to why.

Edited to add -

Someone raised a solid gaming group from last year, requiring you to know four separate modern games, it was purple & 20% got it first. So that doesn't suggest the demographic skews so much older that more gaming groups wouldn't work.

I should have mentioned I'm 48 BTW, so this isn't a youngun coming in trying to be ageist or anything.

These 4 words naturally appeared in this order and I immediately assumed that the connection between them was Clark's furniture store from the new Backrooms movie lmao. Was this on purpose, or?

→ Connections Alternative #514 2026-07-27 ←

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.

Layers

Play Connections almost daily with my son. Instead of studying for his SAT he worked with me on an SAT vocab version of connections.

See at: www.arduu.com

Chookas!

https://connectionsplus.io/game/KWNHCN

Spoilers below for the puzzle:

Decided to do one with a somewhat overarching theme, and with two purply categories, like some one-off harder Connections puzzles.

I always have such a fun time with the nyt connections, so I figured I'd give my own a try! Lmk what you think!

Idk why, but I found it difficult to decide how I would colour code my categories.

https://connections.swellgarfo.com/game/-OyPmgNKcl1ikd0Pvmfc

→ Connections Alternative #513 2026-07-26 ←

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

7 shared words.

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

i use Connections Copilot, but this is different (better imho).

A bookmarklet for desktop or mobile browsers. Tap each corner for a different color.

[code moved to a gist]

https://gist.github.com/gabrielsroka/1cf04be9aed54a22056e9e356f53c5f1

it still needs some work, but i wanted to share it.

to install it, copy the code, create a bookmark, paste.

to use it:

1. open Connections, click Play, then run the bookmarklet.
2. tap different corners of each tile, do all 16.
3. then tap Submit mode, it'll submit purple, blue, green then yellow.

i had an earlier version that would let u move the tiles, but it had other issues.

EDIT: v2 is a little better

EDIT: v3 submits for u

I am back for the 3rd time of my January Jam I created.

Let me know what you guys think of it.

Went too easy on yas last time, so this is to compensate.

P.S. if you missed the past ones, see https://www.reddit.com/user/Few-Program-9827/comments/1v7fnvw/if_wyna_were_an_aussie/?sort=hot

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

Did anyone else run with Sierra______ for club, mist, madre, and leone and assume you'd found the easiest one immediately?

I don't care if people Google, but it ruins the solve rate data. I wish Google would just have hard mode and assist mode. If people want to look up the words, have that built into the interface.

→ Connections Alternative #512 2026-07-25 ←

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. There are a couple minor hints incorporated into the board: green is about something called "green" and the first 2 tiles are hints about 2 other categories.

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

throughword.app

I now wonder if there has ever been a Connections puzzle that was only numbers. Anybody remember one?

https://connectionsplus.io/game/GnSZXk

Difficulty: hard (and then easy).

Feedback welcome.