NYT Connections Today January 27, 2026 (Puzzle 961): Categories, Expert Hints, Answers

If today’s Connections grid felt like it kept changing its mind, you’re not imagining it. January 27’s puzzle leans on words that look like they belong to one “world” (Batman, baseball, hockey, folklore), then quietly asks you to switch contexts mid-thought. The result is a board where several tiles seem to fit two different groups until you spot what the editor is really doing.

A helpful way to play this one: try grouping by “type of label” first. Are you looking at roles, teams, character titles, or wordplay? When you separate those buckets, the set starts to behave. If you’d like to play along before revealing anything, the official New York Times Connections game is the cleanest reference point for the daily grid.

Today’s word list: BATMOBILE, CAPSTONE, BALLROOM, BASEMENT, CHARACTER, CARD, CUTUP, DEVIL, FLYER, FRIAR, JOKER, MAID, PENGUIN, RANGER, ROBIN, SHERIFF.

How this grid tries to trick you: “ROBIN” can point you to Batman before it points you to Robin Hood. “PENGUIN” looks like an animal before it becomes a team name. “CARD” can feel like a physical object before it becomes a “funny person” clue sitting beside JOKER and CUTUP. The cleanest path is to lock one obvious set, then treat the rest like a sorting exercise: sports names, folklore titles, and a last group that’s basically a spelling/starting-letters game.

Expert hints (no spoilers hidden):

• One group is “people you’d describe as funny” — think personalities or vibes, not objects.
• Another group is hockey, but not “positions” — you’re looking for names that appear on jerseys and logos.
• One group is Robin Hood-adjacent, but the connection is specifically about the first word used in certain character names.
• The final group is the most “Connections-y” twist: the words start with the same chunk as a piece of baseball equipment.

If you’re solving without reveals, try this order: lock the “funny people” set first (it has the strongest internal logic), then the NHL set, then the Robin Hood naming set, and leave the baseball-starting-letters group for last as a confirm-each-one check.

Tap to reveal answers only:

The satisfying “aha” today is how the grid rewards you for thinking like an editor, not a dictionary: a penguin can waddle, sure — but it can also skate; a robin can be a sidekick — but it can also be the lead name in a legend; and baseball gear can be the quiet prefix that makes four unrelated words suddenly snap into the same family.

If you missed yesterday’s grid, here’s the recap you can use to solve it quickly (and double-check your groups): NYT Connections Today January 26, 2026: Hints & Answers.

Come back tomorrow and you’ll likely notice the same pattern again: Connections loves everyday words that are “true” in more than one direction. When a tile feels too easy, that’s usually your cue to test it against a second meaning before you commit.