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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Spoilers ahead for NYT Connections on Saturday, August 22, 2026. Need a nudge before seeing the solution? Start with the hint ladder below, then check the four groups and their words.
Hints for August 22
Try these clues in order and stop when you have enough help. The first points toward the yellow group; the last gives a broad clue to the purple group.
- Wear eye protection for this kind of work.
- Some varieties are especially associated with summer.
- Think about watering plants.
- Think of pop-culture groups such as Destiny’s Child or Living Single.
For more direct nudges: the groups involve tools, melon, hose settings, and four terms that can each come before the same word.
Connections answers for August 22
The four categories and their words are:
| Color | Category | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Carpentry tools | CHISEL, HAMMER, PLANE, SAW |
| Green | Kinds of melon | BITTER, MUSK, WATER, WINTER |
| Blue | Garden hose settings | CONE, JET, MIST, SHOWER |
| Purple | ___ Girls of pop culture | GILMORE, GOLDEN, MEAN, SPICE |
How the trickiest group fits
The purple words all pair with “Girls”: Gilmore Girls, The Golden Girls, Mean Girls, and the Spice Girls. The blue group uses names for garden-hose spray settings: cone, jet, mist, and shower.
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About this date’s puzzle
PuzzlePage describes Connections as a daily puzzle that unlocks at midnight in each player’s local time zone and says everyone gets the same puzzle on a given date. That timing and shared-puzzle description is PuzzlePage’s account.
PuzzlePage and Parade both identify the August 22 edition as puzzle #1168. An Xfire archive search result associates the same date and themes with #1249, but the date-specific archive page could not be confirmed. The date is therefore the clearest way to identify this edition.
Sources: PuzzlePage’s August 22 guide and Parade’s August 22 guide.
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