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Puzzle #896
Purple was leftovers. I guessed very wrongly that it had something to do with rapper names. I do know some ABBA songs, but two of those are still a mystery to me.
Connections MONDAY
Puzzle #897
After I got the red herring out of the way and saw purple, it was a lot easier.
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Puzzle #897
I got a little lost in the weeds but pulled it out.
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Puzzle #897
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Puzzle #897
I had very little trouble with Monday’s. Yellow seemed quite obvious, which killed the red herring and allowed the others to fall into place pretty easily.
Couldn’t differentiate blue and green.
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Puzzle #897
Yellow didn’t kill the red herring.
Electromagnetic frequency bands could have included any of MICROWAVE, RADIO, INFRARED, ULTRAVIOLET, and X-RAY. You needed to rule at least two into other categories to remove this as a possible grouping.
That’s what I got hung up on, and it messed up any attempt to get me back on track.
Meanwhile here is Tuesday’s. I did not know one of the Greens, so that threw me.
Puzzle #898
Connections TUESDAY
Puzzle #898
Green was by elimination because the calamine notion we have is NOT hot pink, it’s cream-coloured.
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Puzzle #898
Blue was leftovers.
I’m a day behind y’all. So this is Monday. I enjoyed this one as there were kinda two red herrings and I had to work the whole thing out before solving:
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Puzzle #897
Red herrings: I first had X-RAY, MICROWAVE, INFRARED and ULTRAVIOLET together, but things weren’t working out in the rest of the puzzle. Then I swapped MICROWAVE with RADIO, when I saw it had to go with the kitchen appliances, but that still didn’t end up working. I looked at the ends of the words and finally saw the four colors that were purple, and it all fell into place afterwards.
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Puzzle #898
Saw purple before blue, but even though it fit the purple pattern, thought it too easy to be purple. Shoulda stuck with my experience of how NYT likes to categorize these. Sure enough, the bot shows 5% for blue and 14% purple for first guess, so blue was more difficult.
Wednesday, and I failed again. Completely lost.
Puzzle #899
Not necessarily. There are enough people who figure out all of the categories before clicking any, and who deliberately try for reverse-rainbows, that purple might be a common first-guess even if it’s hardest.
Yes, of course it can. But purple is almost always <10% first guess and the fourth-most popular first guess on a normal day, and I find the first guess percentages to be good enough proxies for difficulty level. I read the analysis almost every day, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one that I was surprised by. I generally do figure out much of the puzzle before entering it in, as that avoids falling for red herrings (which was especially important in that particularly puzzle). Every once in awhile you even get a purple as the most or second-most popular first guess not because of people who figure out the puzzle ahead of time, but because the purple is just that easy.
Connections WEDNESDAY
Puzzle #899
Chuffed I figured out purple quickly.
I enter them as I find them, I’ve never tried to work them all out and then enter.
Got caught by the red herring but otherwise made it through.
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Puzzle #899
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Puzzle #899
Couldn’t resist the red herring and didn’t get purple.
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Puzzle #899
Red herring was way too easy to fall for. Plus JAN, APR, and MAR are abbreviations for month names but MAY is not. Purple was leftovers.
Guilty as charged.
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Puzzle #899
I saw the red herring first but thought it too obvious. Then blue, then purple, then entered those two in reverse order and figured the last two out, as those were obviously the purple and blue. Purple firsts were 6%. Blue first was 8% for today’s puzzle.