What looked like a straightforward daily puzzle quickly turned into a trap for many players in NYT Connections on Friday’s #1062 game. The hardest part, as usual, came from the purple category, which asked players to spot words that end in candy brands after the letter “S” is removed.
Connections asks players to sort 16 words into four groups of four. The categories are color-coded by difficulty, with yellow as the easiest and purple as the most difficult, and players are allowed only four mistakes before the game ends.
This edition mixed romantic slang, five-sided objects, idiomatic expressions, and wordplay that seemed simple at first glance. That combination made several words feel like they could belong to more than one group, which is exactly the kind of setup that often turns a Connections puzzle into a test of pattern recognition rather than vocabulary alone.
The words in game #1062 were CANOODLING, FIRST BASE, MAKING OUT, NECKING, TONSIL HOCKEY, HOME PLATE, JEANS BACK POCKET, SCHOOL CROSSING SIGN, THE PENTAGON, LEFT FIELD, NOWHERE, THE BLUE, THIN AIR, BURGER KING WHOPPER, FILM NERD, MEMENTO, and PITCHER’S MOUND.
The yellow group pointed to “Slang for Kissing.” Its four answers were FIRST BASE, MAKING OUT, NECKING, and TONSIL HOCKEY. That set fit together quickly once the romantic slang theme became clear, but it also helped disguise the rest of the board.
The green category was “Five-Sided Things.” It included HOME PLATE, JEANS BACK POCKET, SCHOOL CROSSING SIGN, and THE PENTAGON. Those choices leaned on shape rather than subject matter, which made them easy to overlook while scanning for more obvious connections.
The blue group was labeled “Unexpected Places to Be ‘Out Of’.” The answers were LEFT FIELD, NOWHERE, THE BLUE, and THIN AIR. Each phrase works as a location-based expression, but all four also share the sense of sudden absence or being nowhere at all.
The purple category was the one that caused the most friction. It was titled “Ending in Candy Brands Minus ‘S’,” and the answers were BURGER KING WHOPPER, FILM NERD, MEMENTO, and PITCHER’S MOUND.
That final group reflects the kind of logic Connections often uses to mislead players. The words look unrelated on the surface, yet the hidden pattern only appears once the candy-brand ending is considered after removing the letter “S.”
The game’s format makes that kind of mistake especially costly. Since only four wrong guesses are allowed, many players try to secure the most obvious category first and leave the more deceptive links for later.
Connections continues to sit alongside other popular daily word games because it is quick to play but still difficult to master. The challenge in puzzle #1062 came from familiar words that seemed to belong in several different places before the correct groups finally snapped into focus.
A previous puzzle, #1061 on 07 May, included categories such as Fishing Gear, Multitude, Basketball Infractions, and Controlled with Up/Down Buttons. In that game, the Basketball Infractions group was made up of CARRY, DOUBLE-DRIBBLE, GOALTEND, and TRAVEL.