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Today's puzzle is pretty easy asking you to remember some named traditions on belts.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for May 22 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,076. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,075, 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
- Loosey-Goosey
- Convention
- Check In
- Baggage Claim
- Carry-On
- Custom
- Checkout Lane
- Follow Up
- Assembly Line
- El Nino
- Social Norm
- Touch Base
- Revolving Sushi Bar
- Unwritten Bar
- Reconnect
- Tailor-Made
We have the Connections categories below but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Call
- 🟩 Green: Tradition
- 🟦 Blue: Moving machinery
- 🟪 Purple: What's your name?
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: Reach back out
- 🟩 Green: The way things are done
- 🟦 Blue: Places with conveyor belts
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with name homophones
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 22 for puzzle #1,076 are significantly easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.8 out of 5.
- 🟨 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
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.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Stove knob settings: High, medium, off, simmer
- 🟩 Potency: Concentration, force, intensity, might
- 🟦 Music theory concepts: Interval, key, mode, scale
- 🟪 "____ Day" movies: Groundhog, independence, the longest, training
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,075, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.
I ended up going hard, easy in a pattern today.
My first go I was looking for colors between yellow, pumpkin and honey. But that is how I clicked on mustard with yellow and honey. I nabbed hot but it did take a moment for Colonel mostly because I was looking for food.
Next, I spotted the pies with Chess. That got me to pecan, pumpkin, peach and strike. Fortunately, my terrible sweet tooth saved me because I was aware of the shoofly pie, though this is such a regionalism that I'm not sure if it should count as a yellow. Luckily, without looking elsewhere, I just swapped out peach for shoofly which worked.
With the final eight, I was able to see the tennis words. Quickly snagged advantage, deuce, forty and love.
Which left the booty slang in caboose, can, moon and peach.
