May 12, 2024, Was the Toughest, Brain-Bustingest Connections Puzzle Ever

I love Connections. And also, I hate Connections. The NYT Connections puzzle makes me feel smart when I solve it, and like a complete bozo when I blow it. (CNET posts daily answers for Connections, Wordle, Strands, Connections: Sports Edition, and the Mini Crossword if you need some help.)

The New York Times released Connections in June 2023 in beta, and it soon became the second-most-played game the Times has, behind only the mighty Wordle. The puzzle gives you 16 words, and you have to fit them into four groups of four. It throws you plenty of red herrings. A word can fit into multiple groups, but there’s only one solution that allows all the words to find a group.

Apparently, there’s an online word-game tool called Word Unscrambler (guess what it does!), and the people behind this site have analyzed Google searches where people were looking for the phrase “Connections hint” from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2024.

“Americans search 2.4 million times a month for Connections hints,” a site spokesperson said. “Connections hints are being searched 2.4 times more than Wordle hints.”

The ultimate, toughest, brain-bustingest Connections puzzle ever? According to the Google searches, it was May 12, 2024. The unsolved puzzle appears at the top of this story, and the answers are below.

I can see why it’s a tough one. There are a LOT of three-letter words, four of which are classed together as acronyms, two of which fit in another category altogether.

And there are a number of words that could go into an animal category (Kid! Mule!) but that the game places in other categories.

As you can see, the categories are Playfully Poke Fun At (KID, NEEDLE, RIB, TEASE), Cuts of Beef (CHUCK, FLANK, LOIN, ROUND), Acronyms (MIA, OMG, PIN, RAM), Cocktails Minus Place Names (LIBRE, MAMA, MULE, SLING).

The second-toughest Connections puzzle, according to the analysis, came just one week to the day before, on May 5, 2024. That puzzle’s categories and answers were Something Gained From Hard Work (BENEFIT, FRUIT, RETURN, REWARD), Kinds of Bagel (EGG, EVERYTHING, PLAIN, POPPY), Contribute to a Movie (ACT, DIRECT, PRODUCE, WRITE), Starts of Monsters (FRANK, MUM, VAMP, WERE).

The Word Unscrambler site also sorted its searches by state, and the May 12, 2024, puzzle topped the toughness list in 36 states.