The answer to today’s NYT Connections puzzle (#1125) for July 10, 2026, is revealed below. Three spoiler-free hints appear first for anyone still working through the board.
Hints for NYT Connections #1125 – July 10, 2026
- Hint 1: One group is made up of toggles found in a smartphone’s settings menu.
- Hint 2: One group of four acts was known for synthesizers and placed charting singles in the 1980s.
- Hint 3: One group contains phrases or compound words that open with a call a baseball umpire makes during a game.
- Hint 4: One group describes either a dessert or a style of serving it.
NYT Connections #1125 Answers – July 10, 2026
Yellow (Easiest) – Smartphone Settings: AIRPLANE MODE, DO NOT DISTURB, HOTSPOT, LOCATION SERVICES
Green – Dessert Menu Descriptors: A LA MODE, DECADENT, FRESH-BAKED, MOLTEN
Blue – ’80s Synth-Pop Bands: DEPECHE MODE, ERASURE, NEW ORDER, PET SHOP BOYS
Purple (Hardest) – Starting With Baseball Calls: BALL GOWN, OUTKAST, SAFE MODE, STRIKE A POSE
Puzzle #1125’s defining trap was “mode.” It threads through all four difficulty groups at once: AIRPLANE MODE in the phone-settings category, A LA MODE in the dessert descriptors, DEPECHE MODE in the synth-pop bands, and SAFE MODE closing out the baseball-calls group. Any attempt to cluster items by the shared word rather than their underlying concept will send a guess sideways. The constructor planted “mode” symmetrically across Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple, making it a completely useless sorting signal.
The Purple group required the sharpest pivot. BALL, OUT, SAFE, and STRIKE are all umpire calls – but the phrases they open stretch across entirely unrelated domains: a formal gown (BALL GOWN), a Madonna choreography instruction (STRIKE A POSE), a hip-hop duo whose name is deliberately misspelled from the standard dictionary word (OUTKAST), and a computer restart option (SAFE MODE) that also feeds directly into the “mode” trap. Getting to Purple cleanly almost certainly meant eliminating the other three groups first.
Yellow was the clearest foothold. AIRPLANE MODE, DO NOT DISTURB, HOTSPOT, and LOCATION SERVICES all read unmistakably as phone settings once you treated “mode” as belonging to the toggle rather than linking to Depeche Mode or anything French. Green’s Dessert Menu Descriptors follow: DECADENT, FRESH-BAKED, and MOLTEN point plainly toward sweets, and A LA MODE lands cleanly once it is understood in its American sense of “served with ice cream” rather than its original French meaning of “in fashion.”
The full answer key for NYT Connections #1124 on July 9 is available if you want to compare yesterday’s categories. Today’s Wordle answer for July 10, 2026 is published separately, and the NYT Strands hints for July 9 are also live.
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