NYT Connections #1,153 Reveals 4 August 7 Categories and 16 Answers

Q: Can you spot the hidden creatures that made puzzle No. 1,153 notoriously difficult to solve?

Yes. The hidden creatures were male animal names embedded at the start of the four purple-category words: **buck** in **buckyball**, **jack** in **jackpot**, **ram** in **rambo**, and **tom** in **tomatillo**. That wordplay category — “starting with male animals” — is what made Connections No. 1,153 especially tricky. The four words do not share an obvious surface meaning, so solvers had to ignore what the full words usually suggest and instead notice the animal-name prefixes. In this case, **buck** is a male deer, **jack** can mean a male donkey, **ram** is a male sheep, and **tom** is a male cat or turkey. Reports on the puzzle consistently described that purple set as the hardest part of the board. Many players were pulled toward more literal or misleading associations, particularly because words like **rambo**, **wick**, and **shaft** seemed to point toward other themes. The puzzle became easier only after the more straightforward categories were removed: candle components, cold things, and elevator parts. So the “hidden creatures” were not separate words in the grid but animal names concealed at the beginnings of the remaining entries — the decisive pattern behind the puzzle’s difficulty.

Q: How did two simple overlapping words trick thousands of NYT Connections players in yesterday's puzzle?

They tripped players up by seeming to belong to more than one plausible group. In Friday’s Connections puzzle, **“wick”** and **“shaft”** were the main red herrings because both looked like they could fit outside their real categories. “Wick” was correctly part of **components of a candle** with fragrance, jar, and wax. But many players also read it as a pop-culture reference to **John Wick**, which made it feel like it could pair with words such as **“Rambo”** and even **“shaft,”** another famous title/name. At the same time, “shaft” belonged in **parts of an elevator** with buttons, cables, and motor, but on its own it was vague enough to pull attention toward other false themes. That overlap mattered because Connections is built around misdirection. Solvers often scan for four words that feel related before understanding the intended category. Here, “wick” and “shaft” were simple, familiar words with multiple associations, so they encouraged incorrect groupings and burned through guesses. The puzzle’s harder twist came from the purple set, where **buckyball, jackpot, rambo, and tomatillo** were linked not by meaning but because each starts with a male animal name: **buck, jack, ram,** and **tom**. Many players only recognized that pattern after eliminating the more obvious candle, cold, and elevator groups.

3 articles · Updated · Lifehacker · Aug 7

Puzzle #1,153 for August 7 groups the 16 words into four sets: candle components, cold things, elevator parts, and words starting with male animals.
Yellow answers are FRAGRANCE, JAR, WAX and WICK; green answers are LIQUID NITROGEN, REFRIGERATOR, SNOW and SUNDAE.
Blue answers are BUTTONS, CABLES, MOTOR and SHAFT, while the purple set is BUCKYBALL, JACKPOT, RAMBO and TOMATILLO.
The trickiest misdirection linked RAMBO, SHAFT and WICK as apparent action-hero references before the puzzle resolved into elevator parts and animal-name wordplay.