NYT Connections #1044
Hints, category titles, and full answers for Monday, April 20, 2026
Connections Hint #1044 — April 20, 2026
Connections Walkthrough — April 20, 2026
A breakdown of every category from the April 20, 2026 puzzle, the trap words designed to fool players, and what made it tricky.
Group-by-group breakdown (easiest to hardest)
- FISHING GEAR
You can group BAIT, HOOK, NET, and ROD as items an angler reaches for.
- MASS OF SMOKE
BILLOW, CLOUD, PLUME, and PUFF all describe visible shapes drifting from fire or a chimney.
- ASSOCIATED WITH BLACK WIDOW SPIDERS
You can connect CANNIBALISM, HOURGLASS, VENOM, and WEB once you think of a specific dangerous spider.
- ___ MONDAY
BLUE, CYBER, MANIC, and MEATLESS click when you test each directly before MONDAY.
The trap words that fool most players
Words placed in this puzzle to make one category look like another.
- WEBlooks like · FISHING GEARactually · ASSOCIATED WITH BLACK WIDOW SPIDERS
It resembles NET as something that catches, but here it points to how the arachnid traps prey.
- BLUElooks like · MASS OF SMOKEactually · ___ MONDAY
Blue can describe haze or smoke, but its real job is completing a familiar Monday phrase.
What makes this puzzle clever
The hardest group is a phrase-completion set, while the others are concrete theme clusters with some overlapping capture and smoke imagery.
About this puzzle
This is the complete solution to NYT Connections puzzle #1044, originally published on Monday, April 20, 2026. The four categories ranged from MASS OF SMOKE (the easiest, yellow group) through ___ MONDAY (the trickiest, purple group, which usually involves wordplay or hidden patterns).
You can browse our complete Connections archive for every past puzzle since the game launched in June 2023, or jump to today's puzzle for the latest hints.