NYT Connections #1047
Hints, category titles, and full answers for Thursday, April 23, 2026
Connections Hint #1047 — April 23, 2026
Connections Walkthrough — April 23, 2026
A breakdown of every category from the April 23, 2026 puzzle, the trap words designed to fool players, and what made it tricky.
Group-by-group breakdown (easiest to hardest)
- KINDS OF FICTION
You can group HISTORICAL, LITERARY, PULP, and SCIENCE as familiar bookstore labels.
- BORDER
You can then see FLANK, NEIGHBOR, SKIRT, and TOUCH all describe being alongside or adjacent.
- WORDS IN A PLANETARY MNEMONIC
You can hear MY, VERY, EDUCATED, and MOTHER from the common planet-order sentence.
- STARTING WITH FOUR-LETTER '80S BANDS
Last, test prefixes: ASIAGO, DEVOTE, TOTORO, and WHAMMY hide band names up front.
What makes this puzzle clever
The purple group uses hidden openings, while the blue group pulls words from a remembered sequence rather than their standalone meanings.
About this puzzle
This is the complete solution to NYT Connections puzzle #1047, originally published on Thursday, April 23, 2026. The four categories ranged from BORDER (the easiest, yellow group) through STARTING WITH FOUR-LETTER '80S BANDS (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.