I really like “Connections”. It’s short and they opened up the archive which is 5 a week from june 2023.
Monday crossword and the occasional Tuesday. The mini crossword. The current events thing.
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I really like “Connections”. It’s short and they opened up the archive which is 5 a week from june 2023.
Monday crossword and the occasional Tuesday. The mini crossword. The current events thing.
I am playing a lot. Have had some free time lately.
Day after the Duke game I sat all morning 4:30–9 am holding my little bottle of nitro and wondering if the Knife and Gun Club at Emory would be the correct choice. I made it home on the direct flight but not without remembering the President of Montana State who died of cardiac arrest at the baggage carousel a few decades back.
So the hospital here, first a bit like, “you’re destined for the cath lab” but the cooler heads prevailed.
But all those sick people caring for all the sick people and waking me up every 3 hours and getting so intimate with bodily fluids and stethoscopes, etc. It’s a covid, rhino, upper respiratory, whatever petri dish.
So I’m workin my way through 2023 Connections. And again, I do recommend it in between seeing a whipped cream-less Ali Larter on Landmen.
Yes, every day. Son set up a website for 5 family members and we all play, post scores. They compete for the fastest times, I plod along slowly. He has all kind of awards and such built in when we post too. Rare that a day is missed.
I also play the mini crossword, Strands, Wordle (but the way I play it is probably too boring for most - I post 3 words that have 15 different letters, then solve it. Usually pretty close to the answer being obvious by that point.)
Finally, also do Spelling Bee.
I do that and then do a Duolingo lesson or pronunciation drill. My pseudo daughter in law and I are partners so we have to each get our lesson in to extend our streak.
I don't play chess or do anything terribly taxing like major crosswords, so these are all fun ones that I will do.
I usually get the connections in a couple of minites but then about every 10th one I get two and come to a screeching halt. I’m particularly bad when it is some 21st century cultural reference like the nicknames of the spice girls.
Oh, it can take me much longer than that. I'm definitely a plodder.
I’m in a group chat with some siblings and we post our Wordles, Waffles, and Connections. I’ve kind of gotten bored with Wordle but they keep me going with the competition. Connections is by far my favorite and probably the one I’m best at.
I work the NYT (a week late via the Seattle Times) and the LA Times crosswords every day I have time but I don’t even attempt the Friday NYT unless I’ve got an hour to kill.
What are waffles? Part of the NYT suite of games, or something else?
My sons are much better at Connections than I am, and you guys are, too. I usually get it, but I don't always see the connections right away. Then again, I've always got a million things going on, watching TV, talking to my wife, and listening to a podcast with earbuds in. (I really don't think it matters--I'm a plodder no matter what.)
Reporting in: Connections
319 Completed 86% win percentage 28 day streak.
Time wasted….er…hey I’m old and am supposed to do crosswords and word puzzles for my mental health.
I'm at a higher percentage than that, but I have a remarkable tablet that I use to help. I write down all of the Connections words, and play around with it, and it's a lot easier than when I used to just look at it on my phone and do that in my head. Probably not as good of a mental exercise. But after I settle on all 4 of them, I then try to figure out which is the hardest, 2nd hardest, 3rd hardest, and easiest, and put them in that order when I plug them into my son's app. I'm shooting for the "hard mode" thumbs up award.
As I said, my two sons, my wife, and my daughter-in-law all play, and my son has an app he built so that we can load in our daily results. It calculates them, calculates the time (based on when we load it into his app), gives "hard mode" results, total wins, accuracy, perfect boards, perfect ratio, a "People's Champ" award (only one with a perfect one that day), Gunslinger (fastest--all of us are always up after midnight), Hard Mode, Median Time, Best Time, active streak and max streak. There is a button for comments so we can razz each other, praise each other, etc. as we see fit. I usually complain because I screw up pasting it with my fat fingers and if your spacing is off a block, his app won't recognize it properly.
My active streak is 8. I'm in 3rd place right now out of 5 in active streaks. First place is my wife, with 454, and 2nd place my youngest son, with 431. They're nuts.
Oftentimes I’ll take a screenshot then use the editing tool to highlight what might be different connections. If a word gets highlighted in more than one color you have to go to work. I cleared a lot of stuff out of my phone a while ago and it says I’ve only completed 48 but it’s a lot more than that. 35 with no mistakes, 8 with one, 2 with two, 2 with three and 1 failure.
I love the dynamics of it. Some seem a lot easier than others but then sometimes I think a lot of it has to do with which one you get first—and what it leaves to work with. I usually don’t even try to name the connection—I go more by feel.
NYT does not enter my home, darken my computer screen nor line my parakeet cage.
Darrell your family has got that
Literacy thing going on.
Oh, not really -- we just have fun with it kicking it around. I think it's a way to keep old mom and dad involved--I appreciate it.