NYT Connections puzzle No. 1,047 on April 23, 2026, asked players to sort a fresh batch of words into four clean groups, and the hardest clues pointed toward borders, fiction, planets and a pair of four-letter '80s bands.
The yellow group hint led to words that meant where two things or places come together. The answers were flank, neighbor, skirt and touch. The blue group hint pointed to something you might learn in a basic astronomy class, and the words were educated, mother, my and very — the pieces of the memory device “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles,” which some people use to remember the order of the planets from the Sun. The purple group hint began with four-letter '80s bands, with asiago, devote, Totoro and whammy filling the set. Another category pulled in kinds of fiction: historical, literary, pulp and science.
The puzzle came in the middle of the Times’ daily Connections routine, the kind of format that resets every day and keeps regular players coming back for another round. For those who use the Times Games section, the Connections Bot also adds a score and breaks down answers after play, while registered users can track progress, win rate, perfect scores and win streaks.
That mix of a playful clue style and a built-in scoring system is what keeps the game sticky. A player can clear one category fast and still get tripped up by another, which is exactly why the border set and the planetary mnemonic stood out here. The answer to the day’s puzzle was less about spotting a single trick than about seeing how the clues could point in different directions at once — from geography to astronomy to pop culture shorthand.
