The NYT Connections answers for Wednesday, July 15, 2026 (puzzle #1130) are below, with hints first for players still working through it.
Hint for Yellow: These four words all name formal institutions or roles within the legal system.
Hint for Green: Each of these things has laces – though for two of them, you might not immediately think of that as their defining feature.
Hint for Blue: Each word precedes or follows a common word to describe a broad category of athletic activity.
Hint for Purple: Add ROOM to the end of each word to get a phrase meaning extra space or margin.
NYT Connections answers for July 15, 2026:
Yellow – Terms For The Legal System: BAR, BENCH, COURT, TRIBUNAL
Green – Things With Laces: BASEBALL GLOVE, CORSET, FOOTBALL, SHOE
Blue – Kinds of Sports: EXTREME, MOTOR, RACKET, WATER
Purple – ___ Room (Extra Space): BREATHING, ELBOW, HEAD, WIGGLE
The legal-system group is where today’s puzzle hides its sharpest trap. COURT belongs unambiguously in Yellow – the court of law, the courtroom, the court’s ruling – but COURT is also a surface on which sports are played: tennis courts, basketball courts, squash courts. Players scanning Blue (Kinds of Sports) will be tempted to place COURT there before realising Blue is about types of sport, not venues. RACKET operates the same way in reverse: RACKET sports is a legitimate Blue category (tennis, squash, badminton), but RACKET also means a criminal scheme – pulling players back toward Yellow. BENCH, too, earns its difficulty: the bench in legal terms means the judge or the judiciary collectively, but bench press, bench player, and coach’s bench all generate sports interference.
Green’s laces group rewards solvers who think literally rather than categorically. SHOE is the obvious one – shoelaces are the prototype. CORSET laces are historical but unmistakable. The two that cost people guesses are FOOTBALL and BASEBALL GLOVE. An American football has a set of laces running along its seam, originally functional for grip and inflation, now integral to the ball’s form. A baseball glove is laced together through a web of leather thongs that hold the palm, fingers, and pocket in their shape. Both objects have laces; neither object is typically described that way. That gap between accurate description and habitual description is where Connections earns its difficulty rating.
Purple’s ___ ROOM construction is the day’s most satisfying group once it resolves. BREATHING ROOM, ELBOW ROOM, HEADROOM, and WIGGLE ROOM all mean essentially the same thing – margin, latitude, space to move or manoeuvre – but they arrive in the grid as bare adjectives and adverbs that carry no obvious connection to each other. BREATHING, ELBOW, HEAD, and WIGGLE share nothing on the surface. The shared invisible suffix is what makes the group invisible until it isn’t.
Today’s Wordle #1852 answer for July 15, 2026 is PSHAW. Connections reset at midnight ET.
