Today’s NYT Connections #1189 for September 12 is tricky, especially the Purple group. Here are hints and answers to help you solve it.
NYT Connections hints for September 12
- Yellow: Things drivers might add to make their vehicle look or feel more personal.
- Green: Different types of people you might encounter while spending time on an online discussion board.
- Blue: Things that repeatedly flash, flicker or briefly switch between visible states.
- Purple: Put the same warning-related word after all four answers.
Main trap: RED and WEATHER immediately sound connected to warnings, but SPOILER and NERD make the relationship less obvious. Instead of looking for four kinds of emergencies, think about a word that can naturally follow each answer.
Blue clue: Think beyond human eyes. Some electronic devices and everyday objects also perform a repeated action that resembles blinking.
Purple clue: Ignore whether NERD, RED, SPOILER and WEATHER have anything directly in common. Add the same word after each one and four familiar expressions appear.
Today’s NYT Connections answers
Reveal the Yellow Group
Category: Ways to personalize a car
Answers: BUMPER STICKER, FUZZY DICE, HOOD ORNAMENT, VANITY PLATE
All four can be used to give a vehicle a more personal look or identity. A bumper sticker displays a message, fuzzy dice are a classic interior accessory, a hood ornament decorates the front of a vehicle and a vanity plate uses a customized registration.
Reveal the Green Group
Category: People in an online forum
Answers: LURKER, POSTER, SPAMMER, TROLL
Each describes a familiar type of online participant. A lurker reads without regularly contributing, a poster publishes messages, a spammer posts unwanted material and a troll typically tries to provoke other users.
Reveal the Blue Group
Category: Things that blink
Answers: CURSOR, EYELIDS, SMOKE DETECTOR, TURN SIGNAL
Each can blink in some form. A computer cursor can flash on screen, eyelids blink naturally, a smoke detector may use a blinking indicator light and a vehicle’s turn signal repeatedly flashes when activated.
Reveal the Purple Group
Category: ____ alert
Answers: NERD, RED, SPOILER, WEATHER
The shared word is alert: nerd alert, red alert, spoiler alert and weather alert. The individual words do not form an obvious category until ALERT is placed after each one.
Why today’s Connections was tricky: The Purple category is the main difficulty because the four answers have very different individual meanings. The Blue group can also create uncertainty because CURSOR, EYELIDS, SMOKE DETECTOR and TURN SIGNAL blink in very different ways.
Today’s solving lesson: If the remaining four words seem unrelated, test common words before or after each answer. Connections often saves these phrase-based categories for Purple, where recognizing a shared expression can be more important than finding a shared definition.
Players can attempt the official daily puzzle and check their results on the New York Times Connections page.
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