NYT Connections, Mini Crossword, and Strands | Sept 11, 2024

[Music] let's do connections we're finding four groups of four we've got dinosaur Pearl eggplant and mint okay lavender smelly things Amber nugget pile tidbit amethyst Fortune mosquito bundle paleontologist Grimace and kernel huh so I mean I see Amethyst and Amber but I also and pearl but they're on top of each other which makes me think that's not what we're doing right um nugget like chicken nugget do we have a chicken paleontologist chicken dinosaur I don't know um chickens are dinosaurs uh let's see mosquito things that buzz annoying things um kernel this spelling of konel is like a konel of popcorn I'm wondering if nugget yeah okay so like a bit of information a nugget of information a kernel of information a tidbit and a pearl maybe I could definitely see Pearl working there cuz you know like here's a pearl of wisdom right all right I'm going to go with that nice bits of wisdom all right it wasn't the purple so maybe I'll get the purple next my uh my collar shirt Theory did not get me purple first but maybe I will still succeed at getting purple let's see so yeah it is it's the red herring is the the gemstones um so maybe these are split up as well Amber Amber and Dinosaur Jurassic Park makes me Rel relate those cuz they had the the the insects in Amber that they extracted the dinosaur blood from from um Amber and paleontology are kind of related as well I just I just don't see how we'd make a category out of that um paleontologist is a a like it feels really out there so I feel like it's a really um a really outof the box connection um we've got pile we've got mint Grimace isn't Grimace a um a muppet if there's three other muuk bits um I don't know them but I doubt it eggplant h i mean could could this be Jurassic Park things found in Jurassic Park I don't know um maybe not even the mosquito but like it's about dinosaurs they had the amethyst they have a paleontologist um and then the mosquito in the amethyst no it would be the Amber not the amethyst sorry I don't know uh what would that make the rest of these that that's always what I like to think about like I'm not sure about this category instead of just immediately locking it in let's see if it helps me figure out what the other two categories would be so I'm going to leave this highlighted I'm going to look at the rest of these Lavender is like a smell it's a flower um mint I feel like lavender and mint are things you would like put in um yeah put in cooking you cook with them but even if we included eggplant in there I don't see a fourth thing you'd cook with or uh a nice smell I haven't thought about Fortune much H Wheel of Fortune Wheel of eggplant um and then bundle ooh fortune and mint are definitely similar okay I'm going to start highlighting those fortune and mint just a large amount of money a pile of money a bundle of money okay this is just um an adjective to describ some large amount of of money large amount of money look at that I didn't even have to change it I haven't changed the category in a bit but there hasn't been like a great opportunity for that these have been harder so I've been thinking about it more but okay so if the if we did do the Amber paleontologist mosquito and dinosaur angle for our for Jurassic Park what would eggplant amethyst lavender and Grimace have in common um I feel like eggplant and lavender I both associate with purple I'm trying to think if amethysts or purple you know I think they are purple things so I'm going to go with this being Jurassic Park featured in Jurassic Park wow and then this being purple things it has the purple category things that are purple you know what I'll take that purple shirt did help me so I will take that wow I I feel like I did very well on that that was not easy um maybe I don't know I like to toot my own horn in connections these days but they definitely have felt harder uh to me um the Jurassic Park connection is crazy I even made that connection I joked about it and I was like I don't think it's that but it was um things that are purple yeah and there were there are some nasty red herrings in here um I'm going to go 3.2 let's see what it says wow straight four out of five they thought this one was hard hard hard all right well uh let's consult the bot see how people have done so far it is I'm doing this relatively early so the bot will not have great data but we'll see all right I completed today's puzzle let's analyze all right 66% solve rate so this is at least yeah this is not as hard as yesterday days for at least the 53346 that played um oh I I wanted to bring this up so this seems to cap at a million games played now I don't know if it's just a display cap because they don't want to give the exact number of people who are playing every day um or if it's only counting the first million people and then stopping um it would be interesting to know I think one way to find that out would be to like check it when it hits first hits a million and then check it again like many many hours later um when it's still have a million and see if the stats are identical cuz if it's only using the first million it's biasing towards non-americans which I think is going to skew the results quite considerably um ideally they would use all of the games um so yeah that it would be interesting to find out if things change for time or if they're doing a random sampling of a million I I don't know exactly but anyway um yeah this is this is the kind of curve I would expect to see if it's not that hard but there's like maybe one difficulty about it because you'll notice that it's mostly none and then less for one less for two less or three and then some people just didn't figure it out so um like yesterday which was really hard had both a a much more abysmal solve rate um much more abysmal it was like 49% when I looked at it um later in the day and um it had like an even amount on none one two three and then just a bunch on four which told me that um people were guessing right it was mostly people get getting lucky rather than actually figuring it out so this one was not as hard as yesterday so all right uh yeah this is expected 95 skill cuz I didn't get purple or blue first but I did get perfect and then one and 148 uniqueness not that surprising considering it's a pretty common approach to to get it all right all right um so first Nuggets of bits of wisdom I got first as did everyone else mostly uh uh interesting um people getting Jurassic Park first people getting purple first the large amount of money might have been the hardest category at 10% getting first all right second ooh pretty even spread here for second um but again green so green was the most common first and the most common second so it's just an easy category um and then the large amount of money would be the second most second interesting and then Jurassic Park and purple are tied for third and fourth because you know third and fourth are always should be tied I would think all right so what are our mistakes eggplant lavender Amber amethyst is the category colors yeah I don't know what what did or are we maybe colors yeah that could make sense Pearl Amber nugget amethyst gemstones and minerals yeah see that's what I was thinking that if these were the gemstones you just add like a gold nugget in there and you get get precious stuff um eggplant mint lavender and Amethyst Botanical and gemstone cues yeah I don't know what this one's about probably just you know this is just trying to figure out what the fourth one in purple is um colors in nature mint lavender Amber amethyst dinosaur Amber amethyst paleontologist related to prehistoric study yeah I could see that all right um ierest at least flip through these so the most common correct guess was green and then the most common first mistake was Pearl nugget Amber amethyst that I was thinking about doing that but because they were stacked on top of each other I avoided it um yellow the the most common second mistake after having green I think was mint lavender Amber amethyst interesting um and then just you're trying to figure out blue purple people are going to do eggplant Amber L lavender amethyst because they don't think um Grimace is uh purple I guess all right cool well how' you do let's do the mini crossword for Wednesday September 11th let's go you're slaying to a drag queen um I I I know what they mean but I don't know what word they're going to use there same here agreed doesn't fit agree um I don't know pipe or pump instrument an organ ran away from the scene fled things often skipped while listening to podcast ads New York blank newspaper that first published the that that published the first crossword puzzle in 19 13 New York world I'm I'm assuming a cube has 12 of them sides o it's not Oregon somehow the r is right though the beetles saying about a long and winding the long and winding road all right family members collectively fams um what the heck is wsr did I get something wrong o is it is it not sides may maybe this is organ I think this is organ and I think this isn't sides I think that this is Edges yeah there there are not 12 sides to a cube there are 12 edges to a cube I did that way too fast uh you're slaying to a drag queen what's this one same here PL okay place for a couch potato the sofa so same here so so Soo so so so do I oh okay and kin oh and you say work it I thought it might be work um but but I wasn't sure that that would be something you'd say to as you're slaying um anyway I I thought it would be a embarrassing if I filled work and it was wrong but I guess it was right all right cool well how'd you do let's do strands for September 11th today's theme is play with words oo why is play with it's hyphenated that's interesting we've got double z here like uh puzzle Okay so what would be the span if one of the answers is puzzle so these are these are these are games right these are are we've had a board games theme before but puzzle puzzle um do we have like solitire um I feel like I kind of see solitire here but you'd have to cross that way um and it doesn't it doesn't it Fizzles out but if we did puzzle I'd like to at least try for the panogram first but I'm I mean I'm not going to bore you by doing nothing for a while but let's find one more word if I can r r u c tuck Ruck stuck stuck wouldn't work that I slates the r truck puzzle truck you could play with like toy trucks or something play with words I don't know if truck would lock in or not that's a good question could this be like you're you're um figuring things out you're puzzling it out I don't know Trucking it out I I don't know I don't think that's a word I don't think that's how you'd use truck um truck is obviously a word s um all these P's I can want to do puppy um PPL or PPL e this way um what what what are we doing here how are we how are we distinguishing these pple like which P would be used maybe none of them then three C's here like a CKY situation okay um I think I just need to figure out like I think I need to start locking in words so let's do puzzle let's see if truck locks in it does so I was expecting it not to to be honest we've got tool oh you can tool it up oh um celebrated a little early on that one is it stool then no don't play with your stool um sorry I don't know why I said that I don't think that joke landed um Sky ah trick tricky we can't actually do tricky this way o trick I think I feel like we've got like CKY somehow how are we distinguishing which CKY would be used though wow yeah I still don't quite get this I want to trace this here sometimes tracing this Edge can give you a little hint there door just door no yeah definitely not a ranks perfect today but this seems a little difficult I don't know for me I'm I'm not thinking about it right and I'm not sure how to fix that once I do I will get them really quick I'm sure of it okay so let's let's actually take a step back let's think about this the spag has to touch the left and right sides [Music] um what do puzzle and truck have in common these are like okay let's think about kids toys what what do kids play with dolls doll okay they play with Lego um building blocks blocks I don't actually see oh I do see I see blocks okay and that's not the spog but I had this question I don't remember who asked but um maybe I'll maybe I'll finish no I won't finish the puzzle first the span is defined as basically you've got your theme which hints at the span the span is uh kind of a categorization of all the words in the puzzle and so that categorization that spog also must touch at least two opposite sides of the grid it doesn't have to start or end at either side but it has to during its time touch at least two sides that are opposite ends of each other that does not mean that it's the only word that touches two opposite ends um so even though blocks could have been the spog blocks is is does not categorize all of the words blocks is just one of the words that is part of the span category and so as a result it can span the whole grid it does not make it the span and of course they actually call it a Spang gram but I hate saying that and I'm never saying that again after today all right I don't know about never but it just doesn't have a good mouth feel and I refuse to say it let's see um what are what are we doing here store I mean store is a word but I I don't think that's a thing people play okay so what's our what is our spog oo do we have like tricycle here tricycle puppet okay so I I need to somehow like get from the left to right here toy toy store oh toy store and then slime so things you would find at a toy store there we go that makes sense I mean I said things some things that kids play with which are things that are found at toy stores so that makes sense cool well how'd you do [Music]