NYT Connections #1149 Answers: Roads & Purple Pester

NYT Connections fans getting their morning fix have a fresh daily puzzle to chew on: game #1149, released at midnight for each time zone. If you’re stuck, the categories revolve around roads and “shades,” plus a tricky vowel rule and a purple group built from synonyms for “pester.” (Read on only if you want the full spoiler breakdown.)

Release and availability details

Puzzle	Date / timing	Game ID	Platform availability
NYT Connections	New puzzle appears at midnight each day (by time zone)	#1149	Free on the NYT Games site (desktop or mobile)

Like always, the game asks you to sort a set of words into four groups of four. The color tiers map to difficulty: green is described as the easiest, yellow is harder, blue is often quite tough, and purple is typically the most difficult. The puzzle also allows up to four mistakes, so you can work your way to the final answer even if you don’t nail every group immediately.

NYT Connections game #1149: the words

NEEDLESS
MYRRH
BACKSTREET
TEA SET
NSYNC
SAGE
FLY BY
NAG CHAMPA
MINT
BYWAY
BUG FIX
RHYTHM
FOREST
LANE
HUNTER
ALLEY

Clues and answers for game #1149

Yellow (Paths)

ALLEY, BACKSTREET, BYWAY, LANE

Green (This color in common / Shades of green)

FOREST, HUNTER, MINT, SAGE

Blue (“Y” is the only vowel)

FLY BY, MYRRH, NSYNC, RHYTHM

Purple (Beginning to annoy / Starting with synonyms for “pester”)

BUG FIX, NAG CHAMPA, NEEDLESS, TEA SET

How today’s puzzle tripped people up

The most common misstep highlighted here was grouping based on an incorrect early assumption: BACKSTREET and NSYNC were treated as a “trap” pair, and several entries were bundled together on the theory that the connection involved herbs and spices. The correction came from noticing that eliminating NAG CHAMPA from that set helped refocus attention on the word’s starting letters.