The New York Times released its daily puzzles on January 19, with Wordle challenging players with a rare letter. Strands featured a theme of shaking things up, while Connections tested knowledge of measurements and idioms. These games continue to engage millions with their clever wordplay.
On January 19, the New York Times Games section unveiled puzzle No. 1675 for Wordle, described as particularly challenging due to a letter that rarely appears in English words—ranked No. 23 in frequency. Hints included no repeated letters, two vowels, starting with W, ending with N, and referring to a smooth, pale, translucent surface. The answer is WAXEN. Yesterday's Wordle, No. 1674, was SUMAC, following recent answers like FIERY on January 17 and RACER on January 16.
Strands puzzle No. 687 had an unusual theme: "Shaking things up," with a clue of "Moving around." Players unlock hints by finding words of four or more letters, such as LOBE, TROWEL, and WAVES. The theme words are SWAY, QUAKE, WAVER, TEETER, WOBBLE, TREMBLE, and VIBRATE. The spangram, LETSROCK, spans from the top-left L, winding down. Every letter is used once all words are found.
Connections No. 953 proved super hard, with one group using an emoji for its title. Hints ranged from "Like a rookie" for yellow to "Not slow" for purple. The groups are: inexperienced (BUDDING, FRESH, NAIVE, NEW); money-faced emoji (BUNDLE, FORTUNE, MINT, WAD); measured by SI units (CURRENT, LENGTH, MASS, TIME); and words after "quick" (FIX, SAND, SILVER, STUDY). The Times offers a Connections Bot for scoring and progress tracking.
These puzzles, part of the NYT Games suite, require a subscription for full access and build on Wordle's 2021 origins by Josh Wardle.