NYT Connections hints and answers today, May 26, 2026

The New York Times continues to expand the popularity of its daily puzzle collection with The New York Times Connections, a word game that challenges players to discover hidden relationships between seemingly unrelated words. The May 26 puzzle (#1080) offers another entertaining mix of sports-related terms, conversational themes, classic film titles and clever wordplay. Today’s puzzle includes categories connected to championship awards, discussion topics, iconic 1980s comedies and a Purple category built around anagrams. This guide includes spoiler-free hints, the complete answers and a quick explanation of how the puzzle works.Connections is a daily word puzzle from The New York Times that asks players to group related words together. The game uses four colour-coded difficulty levels — Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple — with Yellow generally being the easiest and Purple often involving more abstract or playful logic.Players receive 16 words and must organise them into four groups of four. Each group shares a hidden connection that may involve categories, meanings, phrases, themes or wordplay.Here are the correct groupings for today’s puzzle:The puzzle presents 16 words arranged in a grid, and your goal is to organise them into four groups of four words that share a hidden connection. A new Connections puzzle is released daily through The New York Times Games and the NYT mobile app. Players should carefully scan all 16 words and look for the most obvious links first, as rearranging the board can often reveal hidden patterns and reduce confusion.Once you identify a possible category, select the four related words and submit them as a group. Correct answers are automatically locked into place. Since players only have a limited number of incorrect guesses before the game ends, strategic thinking and elimination become especially important for solving the tougher categories.If you enjoy Connections, The New York Times also offers several other popular daily puzzle games:Wordle: Guess a five-letter word in six attemptsSpelling Bee: Create as many words as possible using a specific set of lettersThe Mini Crossword: A short daily crossword challengeStrands: A word-search-inspired puzzle built around hidden themes