Today’s NYT Connections puzzle for May 18, 2026, puzzle #1072, was tricky because it kept changing the kind of logic players needed. One group depended on sound, another on break-apart meanings, another on baseball team names and the hardest one on hidden anagrams.
The biggest traps came from words that seemed to belong together at first glance. Pear, Père, Padre and Pair could pull players toward family or fruit ideas, while Cheap, Earp, Lump and Wiki only made sense after their letters were rearranged.
NYT Connections May 18 Hints
Yellow hint: These four words sound almost exactly the same when spoken aloud.
Sharper clue: The connection is pronunciation, not meaning.
Trap to avoid: Do not build a fruit group around Pear. Its spelling is less important than how it sounds.
Green hint: These words can describe breaking, bursting, cracking or separating.
Sharper clue: Think of something coming apart suddenly or forcefully.
Trap to avoid: Blow may look like an air or wind clue, but here it works closer to impact or damage.
Blue hint: These words connect to Major League Baseball team names.
Sharper clue: Read the words as singular versions of team nicknames.
Trap to avoid: Padre and Père may both point toward father-related meanings, but they do not belong together.
Purple hint: Rearranging the letters creates a hidden set.
Sharper clue: Each answer can be turned into the name of a fruit.
Trap to avoid: The displayed words are not fruit words by definition. The category only appears after anagramming them.
Common wrong paths: A likely mistake was grouping Padre, Père, Pair and Pear because they seem connected through sound or meaning, but Padre belongs with baseball team names. Another false path was treating Cheap, Blow, Crack and Pop as slang-like words, which mixes the green rupture group with the purple anagram group. Players may also have searched for a direct fruit set, but the fruit names were hidden rather than shown on the board.
Today’s NYT Connections Answers
Yellow Group
Green Group
Blue Group
Purple Group
Solving note: Today’s board rewarded players who tested different kinds of connections before committing. Sound, meaning, team names and letter rearrangement all appeared at once, so the safest solve path was to avoid trusting the first visual association.
For official gameplay and post-game analysis, players can visit the New York Times Connections page.
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