NYT Connections Answers (April 22): Puzzle #1045 Too Hard For You? Check Hints, & Solution

NYT Connections April 22 puzzle had pottery tools, hitting words, and tricky sounds. Check hints and full answers here.

NYT Connections resets every day and has a loyal group of fans who love spotting patterns and testing their thinking skills.

Source : Screenshot/New York Times

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Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom

• NYT Connections puzzle on April 22 tested players with four categories.
• The game requires grouping 16 words into four thematic sets.
• Solutions included pottery equipment, wallop terms, pronunciation-varying nouns, and 'pick-up' phrases.
• The puzzle's difficulty stemmed from words with multiple meanings and pronunciations.

NYT Connections: The New York Times’ daily word puzzle, Connections, dropped its Wednesday, April 22 challenge, and this one really tested players. The goal was simple: group 16 words into four hidden sets, but the tricky part was spotting the right connections without getting fooled. Some groups were easy to see, while others needed a lot more thinking. 

Like always, Connections resets daily and keeps players hooked with its mix of logic and wordplay. If today’s puzzle felt confusing, here’s a simple breakdown of the hints and answers.

What Is Connections And How Do You Play?

Connections is a daily word game where you get 16 words. Your task is to sort them into four groups of four. Each group shares one common theme.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. Many words seem like they match, but they actually belong to different groups. That’s where most people make mistakes.

For example, “Hook,” “Nana,” “Peter,” and “Wendy” are all Peter Pan characters. Another example is “Action,” “Ballpark,” “Go,” and “Stick,” which all come before the word “Figure.”

You only get four wrong tries. After the fourth mistake, the game ends and shows you the answers.

Each group also has a colour level to show how hard it is:

• Yellow (easiest)
• Green (easy)
• Blue (medium)
• Purple (hardest)

Some groups are about meaning, some about sound, and some about patterns in words. That’s what makes the game fun and challenging.

Hints And Full Solution To NYT Connections (April 22)

Here are the hints for today’s puzzle:

• Yellow hint: Shaping something from scratch.
• Green hint: Ouch! That’s gotta hurt...
• Blue hint: Same spelling, different sounds.
• Purple hint: These words share a familiar first half...

Extra hints:

• One group depends on pronunciation, not meaning.
• Every group except Blue has at least one word with the letter “G.”

One word from each group to help you:

• Yellow: Clay
• Green: Slug
• Blue: Nice
• Purple: Truck

If you’re ready, here’s the full solution.

Full Solution for April 22:

• Yellow (Pottery Equipment): Clay, Glaze, Kiln, Wheel
• Green (Wallop): Deck, Punch, Slug, Sock
• Blue (Words Pronounced Different Ways As Proper Nouns): Herb, Nice, Polish, Reading
• Purple (Pick-Up ___): Artist, Game, Sticks, Truck

This puzzle was not easy for many players. The yellow group about pottery tools like clay and kiln was clear once spotted. The green group was about hitting or striking, with words like punch and slug.

The blue group was the trickiest. These words change how they sound depending on how you use them, like “Polish” or “Reading.” This made it hard to spot the pattern at first.

The purple group linked to phrases like “pick-up truck” and “pick-up game,” which made sense once the idea clicked.

Overall, this puzzle showed how Connections can be simple and tricky at the same time. Sometimes the answer feels obvious only after you see it.

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