The NYT Connections answers for Monday, August 3, 2026 (puzzle #1149) are below. All four categories are revealed in order from easiest to hardest, with hints first if you are still solving.
NYT Connections Hints for August 3, 2026
Yellow hint: Think of narrow roads, back roads, and the kinds of paths you take to avoid the main street.
Green hint: These are all shades of a single color. Think of the names people give to specific tones in paint swatches and fashion.
Blue hint: Treat Y as a vowel. Every word in this group uses Y as its only vowel – no A, E, I, O anywhere in the sequence.
Purple hint: Each phrase starts with a word that means to annoy or bother someone. The trick is that the synonym is hidden inside a larger compound or phrase.
NYT Connections Answers Today – August 3, 2026 (#1149)
Yellow – ROAD LESS TRAVELED: ALLEY, BACKSTREET, BYWAY, LANE
Green – SHADES OF GREEN: FOREST, HUNTER, MINT, SAGE
Blue – ‘Y’ IS THE ONLY VOWEL: FLY BY, MYRRH, NSYNC, RHYTHM
Purple – STARTING WITH SYNONYMS FOR ‘PESTER’: BUG FIX, NAG CHAMPA, NEEDLESS, TEA SET
Category Breakdown
Yellow – ROAD LESS TRAVELED groups four words for narrow or secondary roads: ALLEY (a narrow lane between buildings), BACKSTREET (a minor street behind main thoroughfares), BYWAY (a small road away from the main route), and LANE (a narrow road or division of a road). The category title references Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” and its famous closing line about taking the road less traveled. All four entries are genuine synonyms for non-primary roads, making this the most accessible category once the theme clicks. The mild trap is LANE, which also belongs to bowling alleys, swimming pools, and highways – its road meaning is only one of many uses.
Green – SHADES OF GREEN places four color-modifier words together: FOREST (forest green, a deep, dark green), HUNTER (hunter green, a dark olive-toned green associated with outdoor and sporting goods), MINT (mint green, a pale, cool green), and SAGE (sage green, a muted, grey-toned green common in interior design and fashion). The puzzle works because none of these words means green on its own – they are all modifiers that combine with green to name a specific shade. SAGE is the likeliest discard if a solver tries it for Yellow (sage as a wise person or herb) before the paint-swatch logic surfaces. MINT similarly pulls toward Yellow or flavor categories before its color meaning takes hold.
Blue – ‘Y’ IS THE ONLY VOWEL is today’s most intellectually satisfying category. All four entries – FLY BY (F-L-Y-B-Y), MYRRH (M-Y-R-R-H), NSYNC (N-S-Y-N-C), and RHYTHM (R-H-Y-T-H-M) – contain Y as their sole vowel, with no A, E, I, or O anywhere. RHYTHM is perhaps the most famous English word fitting this pattern and the most commonly used in word-puzzle discussions of Y-as-vowel. MYRRH adds a second silent H and a doubled R, making it one of the most consonant-dense words in common English use – the aromatic resin appears in the Bible as one of the gifts of the Magi and gives frankincense its most frequent companion. NSYNC hides its Y between two consonant pairs; the boy band’s name itself is an intentional stylisation of “in sync,” with N standing in for “in.” FLY BY is the only two-word entry and the one most likely to be missed if solvers scan single words only.
Purple – STARTING WITH SYNONYMS FOR ‘PESTER’ is today’s hardest category and its best-constructed misdirect. Each phrase opens with a word that is a synonym for pester, hidden inside the longer compound: BUG FIX (to bug someone = to pester), NAG CHAMPA (to nag = to pester; Nag Champa is the iconic Indian incense blend whose name comes from the champak flower and whose first word is the verb nag), NEEDLESS (to needle someone = to tease or pester; NEEDLESS opens with NEEDLE), and TEA SET (to tease = to pester; the phrase TEA SET, read as one run-on string, opens with T-E-A-S-E). The TEA SET entry is the most elegant piece of construction: the natural two-word spacing completely camouflages TEASE, which only surfaces when a solver drops the space and reads the letters in sequence. BUG FIX is the most accessible – BUG as a verb meaning to annoy is widely known. NAG CHAMPA requires knowledge of the incense brand, which narrows the solver pool slightly. NEEDLESS as NEEDLE is the subtlest single-word entry, because the -LESS suffix so completely changes the word’s register.
For previous Connections solutions, see NYT Connections answers for August 2, 2026 (#1148) and NYT Connections answers for August 1, 2026 (#1147).
