The New York Times has published Connections puzzle #1140 for Saturday, July 25, 2026, splitting sixteen words into four categories covering Spanish family terms, crying-related verbs, African currencies and phrases that follow the word “strip.” The puzzle, one of the Times’ most popular daily word games alongside Wordle and Strands, again mixed a straightforward opening category with a currency-themed group that several solvers flagged as the day’s real sticking point.
Multiple outlets that cover the daily puzzle independently, including Forbes, TechRadar and IBTimes Australia, confirmed the same four groupings for game #1140, giving players a reliable way to check their work or grab a hint before their guesses run out.
Yellow Group: Spanish Relatives
The easiest category of the day asked players to spot Spanish-language family terms. The yellow group was made up of Abuela, Madre, and the others didn’t fall in line as easily for non-Spanish speakers. The full set, as verified by Forbes, TechRadar’s write-up and a companion breakdown from ConnectionsSports.com, was ABUELA, HIJO, MADRE and PRIMO — Spanish for grandmother, son, mother and cousin respectively.
Green Group: Start to Cry, With “Up”
The second-tier green category leaned on wordplay rather than vocabulary. When combined with the preposition “up,” each of these verbs means to begin showing physical signs of crying or emotional overwhelm. The four words locked into this group were CHOKE, MIST, TEAR and WELL, each of which becomes an emotional phrase — choke up, mist up, tear up and well up — once paired with “up.”
Blue Group: African Currencies Proved the Real Trap
Despite sitting in the traditionally “tricky” blue slot rather than the hardest purple tier, this was the category that caused the most trouble. The blue group asked players to identify African currencies, linking KWANZA, LEONE, NAIRA and RAND. The kwanza is the official currency of Angola, notably distinct from Kwanzaa, the unrelated annual cultural celebration observed in the United States. The leone serves as the official monetary unit of Sierra Leone, the naira is the legal tender of Nigeria, and the rand is the currency used in South Africa and several neighboring countries within the Common Monetary Area.
Both Forbes and IBTimes Australia noted that players found the currencies harder to spot than the puzzle’s supposedly toughest purple group. One reviewer described completing the puzzle without any mistakes but noted that the blue African currencies category proved more challenging in practice than the purple strip-word category, despite blue traditionally ranking as the second-most difficult tier. That reviewer specifically credited recognizing Sierra Leone and South Africa as countries with helping crack the currency group, while acknowledging limited prior familiarity with kwanza and naira specifically as currency names.
Purple Group: Strip ___ Turned Out Easier Than Usual
The purple category, usually the puzzle’s hardest, softened the difficulty curve this time. The purple group, traditionally the puzzle’s most difficult, followed the pattern “Strip ___,” connecting CLUB, MALL, POKER and STEAK. Each word completes a common two-word phrase when paired with “strip”: strip club, strip mall, strip poker and strip steak. TechRadar’s solver made the same observation about the category order feeling flipped, adding that after working out the currency-linked blue words, knowing that KWANZA is used in Angola, the RAND in South Africa, LEONE in Sierra Leone, and NAIRA in Nigeria was only worth a blue, so where was the purple? The answer came in the form of, in his view, the far easier thread of STRIP____.
Why NZ and Australian Players See Puzzle #1140 Before the US
Connections doesn’t drop on a single global clock. The Times releases a new Connections puzzle at midnight local time in each time zone, meaning players around the world are often working through different puzzles depending on when they log in. That structural quirk means solvers in New Zealand and Australia typically unlock each day’s grid many hours ahead of players in North America, which is why puzzle numbers and spoilers can circulate online well before the US East Coast has even started its Saturday morning coffee.
Connections remains free to play through the NYT Games website and app, sitting alongside Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword as part of the paper’s growing stable of daily word puzzles. With puzzle #1141 set to reset at midnight local time on Sunday, players chasing an unbroken streak will get a fresh sixteen-word grid and, almost certainly, a new set of red herrings to sort through.
