Here are all four answers for the NYT Connections puzzle #1148 on August 2, 2026.
Yellow – FILLER WORDS: ACTUALLY, LIKE, SO, WELL
Green – BY MEANS OF: BY, PER, THROUGH, VIA
Blue – ___ MODE: AIRPLANE, BEAST, DARK, À LA
Purple – LETTER + U.S. AIRPORT CODE: ASEA, FLAX, LORD, OLGA
Hints for each group are below, followed by the full breakdown.
NYT Connections Hints – August 2, 2026
Yellow hint: Four words that appear in speech more to mark a pause or soften a statement than to carry specific meaning. Teenagers use one of them constantly.
Green hint: Four words that all mean the same thing: through the medium of, using, or with the help of something as the channel.
Blue hint: Add MODE after each word or phrase, and you get a common compound term. One entry is French.
Purple hint: Remove the first letter from each word, and you have a three-letter code used at a major U.S. airport. The codes belong to four of the country’s busiest airports.
Yellow – FILLER WORDS: ACTUALLY, LIKE, SO, WELL
All four are discourse markers – words inserted into speech to signal a pause, soften a statement, introduce a correction, or hold the floor while a thought forms. LIKE is the most culturally loaded of the four, its status as a filler having been observed and documented in sociolinguistic research since the 1980s, with particular density among younger speakers in the United States and United Kingdom. SO has become the default sentence-opener in a certain register of conversational English: so many podcasts and interviews now begin their answers with SO that it has been studied as a speech phenomenon in its own right. ACTUALLY typically signals a gentle correction or reframing, while WELL functions as a classic pause word, filling the moment before a response takes shape. The category requires solvers to think about these words in their weakest semantic sense – when they mean almost nothing – rather than their primary dictionary definitions.
Green – BY MEANS OF: BY, PER, THROUGH, VIA
BY, PER, THROUGH, and VIA are all prepositions that can mean by means of, through the channel of, or using as a medium. Each carries that sense in common phrases: sent by email, approved per the policy, communicated through official channels, routed via satellite. The difficulty is that each of the four words also carries a weight of other meanings that crowd the “by means of” sense out. BY is one of the most versatile words in English, covering proximity, agency, time, and multiplication. PER can mean for each, at a rate of, or as stated by. THROUGH denotes passage, completion, and duration as well as method. VIA is perhaps the cleanest of the four, typically restricted to route or medium – which makes it the anchor word once solvers find the category’s frame.
Blue – ___ MODE: AIRPLANE, BEAST, DARK, À LA
Each word or phrase precedes MODE to make a compound term in common use. AIRPLANE MODE is the phone and tablet setting that disables cellular, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, first introduced as a standard feature on mobile devices in the mid-2000s to comply with aviation regulations. BEAST MODE is the state of performing at maximum intensity, a phrase that entered mainstream usage after Marshawn Lynch’s 2011 and 2012 NFL playoff runs, when the Seattle Seahawks running back and his distinctive running style became synonymous with relentless power. DARK MODE is the display setting that swaps a light background for a dark one, reducing screen brightness and, in OLED screens, also battery consumption. À LA MODE is the culinary term for a dessert served with a scoop of ice cream on top, borrowed directly from French, where it means “in the fashion” or “in the style of.” À LA is the category’s deciding word: solvers who group AIRPLANE, BEAST, and DARK quickly will be left scanning the remaining 13 words for the fourth MODE compound. À LA, appearing as a two-word French phrase, is unlikely to surface as a MODE entry until MODE itself has already been confirmed as the pattern.
Purple – LETTER + U.S. AIRPORT CODE: ASEA, FLAX, LORD, OLGA
This is today’s hardest category and one of the more elegant puzzles Connections has set in recent weeks. Remove the first letter from each of the four purple words, and the remaining three letters are the IATA code of a major U.S. airport: A + SEA (Seattle-Tacoma International) = ASEA, F + LAX (Los Angeles International) = FLAX, L + ORD (O’Hare International, Chicago) = LORD, and O + LGA (LaGuardia Airport, New York) = OLGA. The four words are otherwise unrelated – ASEA is an adverb meaning at sea or in a state of confusion, FLAX is the plant whose fiber is used to make linen, LORD is a title of nobility or a term for a deity, and OLGA is a given name of Scandinavian and Slavic origin. None of them reads like it has an airport hidden inside it, which is precisely why the category sits in purple.
FLAX is the most satisfying find: LAX is one of the world’s most recognisable airport codes, appearing on luggage tags from Los Angeles to every other city on earth, yet F-LAX gives no hint of the airport until the letter is stripped off. OLGA is the subtler trap. LGA, LaGuardia’s code, is far less universally known than LAX, ORD, or even SEA for solvers outside the New York metropolitan area. Solvers who know their airport codes well will crack this group; those who do not will find the four words entirely opaque until a crossing solve lands one of the letters in place.
Yesterday, NYT Connections #1147 on August 1 hid OSCAR-WINNING ACTORS in the green group and concealed bread shapes at the start of BOULEVARD, BUNDLE, LOAFER, and ROLLS-ROYCE in the purple. Before that, Connections #1146 on July 31 placed CHEER, FUN, GLEE, and JOY at the openings of CHEERIOS, FUNGUS, GLEEK, and JOYSTICK.
