Today’s Connections hints

Nothing below is revealed until you click it. Take the smallest hint that gets you moving and stop there — the puzzle is still yours to finish.

Connections #1141 · July 26, 2026 · edited by Wyna Liu

Why Connections hints work differently

Wordle is a sequence: each guess buys information, and a good hint is a word that buys you exactly enough. Connections isn’t a sequence at all — it’s a single sorting problem, sixteen tiles into four groups, and you get four mistakes to do it in. So there is no clever opening word to hand you. The only thing that matters is how much you can be told before the sorting stops being yours.

That’s why the hints above are laid out by mistakes remaining rather than by turn. With all four still in hand you want the shape of the puzzle: which group is playing a word game rather than a meaning game, and which tile is baiting you. Down to your last mistake, you want a whole group handed over so you cannot lose. Everything in between is a matter of degree.

The one habit that fixes most failed grids

Solve the group you are mostsure of last, not first. The puzzle is built so that the obvious grouping usually contains one tile borrowed from somewhere else — that borrowed tile is the whole trap. If a group of four leaps out immediately, look for a fifth candidate that would also fit; if you find one, you have found the bait rather than the group.

The wordplay group is the reliable escape hatch. It is the group where the connection is a prefix, a suffix, a hidden word, or a phrase the tiles can all complete. Spot it early and the remaining twelve tiles get dramatically easier.