Today’s Connections wall (Puzzle #884) leans on everyday items and familiar UI symbols, with one tidy set of cosmetics hiding an easy start. If you want to solve it yourself first, skim the hints section; the full groups are below with short explanations for each.
Quick hints by difficulty (Yellow → Purple)
- Yellow: A set of beauty products you’d keep in the same makeup bag.
- Green: Ways to describe overall width or reach.
- Blue: Generic supports that hold or cradle things.
- Purple: Common phone/computer icons you tap or see all the time.
Today’s Connections answers (Puzzle #884)
| Group (difficulty color) | Category | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 🟨 Yellow | Makeup | Blush, Foundation, Highlighter, Powder |
| 🟩 Green | Breadth | Extent, Range, Scale, Scope |
| 🟦 Blue | Object used for support | Base, Holder, Rest, Stand |
| 🟪 Purple | Icons on a phone | Compass, Envelope, Music Notes, Speech Bubble |
Why these fit (and the likely traps)
Makeup (Yellow): These are staple cosmetics. Foundation can be liquid, stick, or powder; Blush and Highlighter add color/shine; Powder sets or mattifies. The likely head-fake here is Foundation versus Base — they’re synonyms in English, but only Foundation belongs in this cosmetic set; Base is saved for the support group.
Breadth (Green): All four—Extent, Range, Scale, Scope—describe overall width, coverage, or magnitude of something (a project’s scope, a study’s range, the scale of an event, the extent of damage). None of these overlap with the physical “support” items or makeup, which makes this set a clean pull once the Yellow group is gone.
Object used for support (Blue): Base, Holder, Rest, and Stand are generic supports that prop up, cradle, or store other items: a phone stand, a utensil rest, a pen holder, a monitor base. Watch for the linguistic overlap between Base and Foundation; if you paired them too early, the set won’t validate.
Icons on a phone (Purple): Each term maps to a widely used interface icon: a Compass for navigation, an Envelope for mail, Music Notes for audio/playback, and a Speech Bubble for messages or chat. These are “picture” words more than categories—think of the visual glyphs you’d spot on a typical home screen.
Suggested solve order
- Start with Yellow: seeing Blush, Foundation, Highlighter, Powder together is straightforward.
- Move to Green: Extent, Range, Scale, Scope cluster cleanly as abstract “size/reach” descriptors.
- Pick off Blue: what physically supports something? Group Base, Holder, Rest, Stand.
- Finish with Purple: the remaining set resolves to familiar UI icons.
Tip: if you’re stuck between Base and Foundation, remove the makeup set first. If you can cleanly place Foundation with other cosmetics, you’ll know Base belongs with supports.
New to Connections?
The daily puzzle presents 16 words to sort into four groups of four. Each group shares a theme and is color-coded by difficulty: Yellow (easiest), Green, Blue, and Purple (trickiest). You win by locking in all four groups before running out of mistakes. You can play the daily puzzle on the New York Times Games page at nytimes.com/games/connections.
If you’ve preserved your streak today, the most efficient route was identifying the makeup quartet early and resisting the “base = foundation” pairing until the Blue group comes into focus.
