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Today's puzzle wants you to quiz your pop culture knowledge.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for May 23 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,077. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,076, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
Solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- First
- Empire
- Last
- Beehive
- Hawkeye
- Sooner
- Force
- Wolverine
- Phantom
- Pompadour
- Daredevil
- Rather
- Chignon
- Nightcrawler
- Preferably
- Bouffant
We have the Connections categories below but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Style
- 🟩 Green: Listo
- 🟦 Blue: Superheroes
- 🟪 Purple: Space battles
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Hairdos
- 🟩 Green: More readily
- 🟦 Blue: Marvel characters
- 🟪 Purple: Words after "the" in "Star Wars" movie titles
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on May 23 for puzzle #1,076 are the same difficulty as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.8 out of 5.
- 🟨 Hairdos: Beehive, bouffant, chignon, pompadour
- 🟩 More readily: First, preferably, rather, sooner
- 🟦 Marvel characters: Daredevil, hawkeye, nightcrawler, wolverine
- 🟪 Words after "the" in "Star Wars" movie titles: Empire, force, last, phantom
It's a pop culture one today.
I started with the Marvel heroes in Daredevil, Hawkeye, Nightcrawler and Wolverine.
I nabbed the hairdos next with chignon, pompadour, beehive and bouffant.
It took a moment to recall all of the titles, but I eventually got the Star Wars movie titles with empire, force, last and phantom.
Which left first, preferably, rather and sooner as my final four "ready" words.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Reach back out: Check in, follow up, reconnect, unwritten rule
- 🟩 The way things are done: Convention, custom, social norm, unwritten rule
- 🟦 Places with conveyor belts: Assembly line, baggage claim, checkout lane, revolving sushi bar
- 🟪 Starting with name homophones: Carry-on, el nino, loosey-goosey, tailor-mode
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,076, which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5.
The belts stuck out to me today starting with revolving sushi bar, followed by baggage claim. This led to assembly line and checkout lane.
Social norm clued me into tradition, which led to unwritten rule, convention and custom.
I spotted the name homophones next with Tailor-made. Which is why I grabbed carry-on, loosey-goosey and El Niño.
Which left check in, follow up, reconnect and touch base as my final four.
