NYT Connections Sunday puzzle reveals four theme groups and solutions

The New York Times daily word game Connections served up a mixed-difficulty puzzle Sunday that left some players stumped and others sharing their streaks online. For those who wanted help, the puzzle’s categorized solutions for the day were published, identifying four themes linking the 16 words and listing the four words in each group.

Connections asks players to sort a 4 by 4 grid of words into four groups of four by finding the links that unite them. Players may make up to three incorrect guesses on the way to a full solve, and the puzzle resets at midnight local time. Like other NYT hits such as Wordle, the game records streaks and allows results to be shared on social media, and the paper has added a Connections Bot to analyze player performance and assign numeric scores.

Sunday’s groups and answers were: Criticize harshly — BASH, BLAST, FLAME, ROAST; Common components of board games — BOARD, CARDS, DICE, PIECES; Heteronyms — AXES, BASS, COORDINATE, DOES; and the fill-in-the-blank theme ___ Sticks — CHOP, DRUM, FIDDLE, FISH. The heteronyms category requires recognition that certain words change pronunciation and meaning depending on context, a feature that trips up some...