GALACTIC PUZZLES: TRAVERSING THE COSMOS OF NYT CONNECTIONS GAME #467

NYT Connections, the newspaper’s not-so-easy word game is a little like an old-school version of the starship Elite, that game of chance that pilots played while hurtling between the stars. Across a constellation, sit words, and between the words sit letters that form the routes along which you must fly. But unlike the urgent beeps of Elite, connection is the subject – words grouped around a given subject or part of speech. Such are the stars and routes of the NYT Connections Universe, and within it, game #467 (15 June 2019) is a very special star indeed. It calls upon the Star Wars saga, the celebration of popular space opera of which we’re 42 years into a geek love affair. It’s a great little puzzle game, and doubly so if, like me, you sailed into a nerd reserve in infancy. So buckle up, fellow puzzler, because it’s time to go starlight speed.

UNVEILING THE CONSTELLATIONS OF WORDS

The puzzle today is a celestial one, in the sense that the constellations it forces us to draw, groupings of disparate words summoned into connection by shared hints or characteristics, are drawn from the unimaginable immensity of the universe of language. The task is to locate those groupings, to make out the patterns, by reading the clues in the subtle stellar dust.

NAVIGATING THE GALACTIC HINTS

Hints are our waystations, our stars. We point at them in NYT Connections, and they arc a whisper of discovery across the reaches of the nebulae. In today’s game, the themes are organised into galaxies of yellow, green, blue and purple.

• Yellow Galaxy:Herein supposition and conjecture roam. ‘Presume’ – ‘Think’ – the power of the mind’s eye of the heavens as wide as space.
• Green Galaxy: Circling about the dictum of identity, this clan focus on ‘Somebody’, our essence, responsible for the sense of otherness, spreading among galaxies.
• Blue Galaxy: Wish granted! Star Wars fans far and wide will surely appreciate the set of characters from The Empire Strikes Back huddled together.
• Purple Galaxy: This quadrant puts us squarely in the madcap zone of ‘Words After “Kitty”’, with ‘kitties’ leading us to discoveries.

DECIPHERING THE STAR WARS ENIGMA

On a whim, Solo, Chewy, Boba and Emperor light up as a part of the blue galaxy, with Solo as the heart. Sound familiar? These characters are part of the Star Wars franchise and their names, so familiar to millions of fans, brightly light up part of the puzzle.

STELLAR STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the universe of NYT Connections contains challenges, from the deceptively easy yellow galaxy to the full complexity of the blue. The key to survival lies in avoiding the asteroid belts of assumption, keeping an eye out for the snake of semantic misdirection and the siren songs of misleading homophones. And beware the false comfort of the seemingly simple group.

SHARING OUR JOURNEYS THROUGH THE STARS

By continuing the tradition of sharing those adventures, we voyage as co-travellers of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle, collectively benefiting from those discoveries, and those times when it’s been peaceful, quiet, and straightforward to find the connections.

BEYOND THE HORIZON: OTHER GALACTIC GAMES

With the mystery of game #467 solved, the cosmos is teeming with new adventures. Wordle, Quordle and Strands all beckon, each boasting their own kind of challenge, each a planet to explore in the burgeoning solar system of words.

A UNIVERSE OF DAILY MYSTERIES

The stars have not and will not cease shining; from NST Connections to your next game, every day is an opportunity to explore the curiosities of language and connection, to strengthen and expand, and to endlessly wait to see what we can learn from the next star.

"ABOUT STAR"

From here, and via NYT Connections and beyond, the star signifies those connections, those points of light, surrounded by an intellectual darkness, that light up the sky of our intellect; those bouncing lightning rods of sparking ideas, every solution a star among all the stars in the endless firmament of possibility that is our brain. With its infinite variety of forms, with its constant waxing and waning of mystery and light, stars in the sky, and games like NYT Connections, often seem to run on parallel tracks illuminating our path; stars remind us of the possibilities and mysteries of games of language and thought. The next time you play a word puzzle or gaze up at the stars, remember the star; it reminds you what it’s like to be caught up in the endeavour of thinking, exploring, connecting and creating.