Players tackling the New York Times’ suite of daily games on Thursday, February 26, 2026, found a particularly engaging “Connections” puzzle, with one category’s theme directly reflected in its color, according to game guides published by CNET and Parade.
The puzzle challenges players to group sixteen words into four categories of four, testing vocabulary and associative thinking. Hints provided suggest groupings based on an “iconic moment,” “color of this group,” “try the fish,” and a “polite request.”
The solutions, as revealed by CNET, categorize the words as follows: the yellow group centers around “pivotal point,” encompassing crossroads, landmark, milestone, and watershed. The green group focuses on “green things,” with answers including grasshopper, shamrock, Statue of Liberty, and wasabi. The blue group represents “elements of joke-telling,” comprised of callback, punchline, setup, and timing. Finally, the purple group revolves around completing the phrase “____ please,” with solutions attention, check, drumroll, and pretty.
The New York Times offers a “Connections Bot” for players to analyze their performance, tracking metrics like completion rate and perfect scores for registered users, as noted by Parade. This feature allows players to assess their strategies and progress over time.
Recent “Connections” puzzles have proven particularly challenging, with previous iterations including obscure groupings such as “things you can set” (mood, record, table, volleyball), “one in a dozen” (egg, juror, month, rose), and “streets on screen” (Elm, Fear, Jump, Sesame). These difficult puzzles highlight the game’s evolving complexity and demand increasingly creative problem-solving skills from players.
The Times also offers other daily games, including Strands and the Mini Crossword, with hints and answers also available from Mashable for the February 26th Strands puzzle.
