The New York Times Connections puzzle for May 16 (No. 1,070) is a masterclass in misdirection. On the surface, it looks like a straightforward puzzle about music. Dig deeper, and you’ll quickly realize the Times has set an elaborate trap.
Today’s puzzle is loaded with musical vocabulary that sounds relevant but actually means something completely different. It’s the kind of setup that makes players second-guess themselves, rearrange their groups halfway through, and wonder if they’re missing something obvious. Spoiler: the real answer is often hiding in plain sight, just not where you expect it.
The Musical Red Herrings
The yellow group, which is usually the easiest, focuses on a conductor or director’s vocabulary. This is the one area where the musical theme actually holds up. The four answers are allegro, forte, largo, and piano. These are all legitimate performance directions you’d find in sheet music or hear a conductor calling out during rehearsal.
But that’s where the straightforward musical interpretation ends.
When Glasses and Music Collide
The blue group is where things get weird. The theme is glassware, and the answers are coupe, flute, stein, and tumbler. Notice anything? Flute appears here, not as a musical instrument but as a type of champagne glass. Coupe is a shallow cocktail glass, stein is the classic beer vessel, and tumbler is what you drink water or whiskey from. This group works because it hijacks musical terminology and redirects it to something completely different.
It’s a clever construction that explains why someone might initially put flute in the yellow group with all the other musical terms. The puzzle exploits that instinct and punishes it.
Messing Around Takes Many Forms
The green group is about mess around, with slightly different connotations. The answers are fiddle, mess, play, and tinker. These all mean to tinker with something, waste time, or generally fool around. Fiddle especially throws people off because it’s also a musical instrument, but here it means to adjust something aimlessly. The group works because all four words share that casual, fiddling-around quality.
The Tricky Purple Finale
The purple group is where the puzzle gets properly devious. The theme is words ending in synonyms for “ASAP” (as soon as possible). The answers are bassoon, Belfast, Nesquick, and thermostat.
This requires a different kind of thinking entirely. Bassoon ends in “soon.” Belfast ends in “fast.” Nesquick ends in “quick.” Thermostat ends in “stat” (as in, immediately or right away). It’s not about what these words are. It’s about how they end and what those endings mean when isolated.
Bassoon is a musical instrument, so it feels like it should live in the yellow group. Instead, it belongs in the purple group where musical terminology is completely irrelevant. The puzzle uses your expectations against you again.
Why This Puzzle Works
The genius of this Connections puzzle is that it creates a false narrative early on. Players see musical terms and think, “Okay, this is a music puzzle.” But only one group is actually about music in the traditional sense. The rest hijack musical words and redirect them to glassware, casual verbs, or wordplay based on hidden suffixes.
It’s exactly the kind of puzzle that makes you feel clever when you finally crack it, but slightly annoyed while you’re solving it. The New York Times Games team clearly understands that the best puzzles aren’t the ones that stick to one theme. They’re the ones that make you question everything you thought you understood.
If you’re registered with the Times Games section, you can now track your progress across puzzles, monitor your win streak, and see how often you’ve nabbed a perfect score. There’s also a Connections Bot available after you finish, which will score your performance and analyze your answer patterns.
For more puzzle help, check out the daily hints and strategies for other New York Times offerings like Wordle, the Mini Crossword, Connections: Sports Edition, and Strands.
The question isn’t whether you’ll solve today’s puzzle. It’s whether you’ll solve it without falling for the musical misdirection first.
