Connections answers for Feb. 9: A puzzle built on phrasing and synonyms

Monday’s Connections puzzle for Feb. 9, 2026 (ET) leaned into a familiar formula that often trips up fast solvers: two straightforward synonym sets, one occupational “money” set, and a final category that only clicks once you stop reading words literally and start reading them as parts of common phrases. The result was a grid that looked simple on first glance, then got stickier as overlapping associations pulled attention in the wrong direction.

Today’s four groups and answers

Why the Yellow set felt “easy” but still risky

“Used in weaving” is the kind of category that invites quick taps—LOOM and YARN are immediate, and NEEDLE pairs naturally with textile work. The trap is SCISSORS: it belongs, but it can also fit many other everyday-tool interpretations, and that broadness can spook players into second-guessing.

This group rewarded solvers who trusted the simplest read. It’s a clean, real-world cluster with minimal wordplay, and it often functions as the puzzle’s on-ramp.

Green’s synonym pile and the overlap problem

The Green category—“Method”—was a classic synonym grouping: APPROACH, MANNER, STYLE, WAY. On its own, it’s clear. Inside a 16-word grid, it can get messy because “style” also hints at writing, “approach” can sound like sports strategy, and “way” can feel too generic to commit.

What made this set work as a mid-level group is that each word points to “how something is done,” but none of them are tied to a single domain. That generality is both its strength and its misdirection: the words look like they could be re-assigned elsewhere until you notice they all function smoothly in the same sentence frame.

Blue: author pay creates a clean lane

“Kinds of payment for an author” offered one of the day’s clearest thematic anchors once you saw ROYALTY. From there, ADVANCE is the obvious partner, and FEE and BONUS round out a set that reads like contract language.

This group also served a structural purpose: it pulled “style” away from the writing-adjacent temptation. Solvers who initially leaned toward a “writing” theme often found themselves separating craft-of-writing words from compensation terms—and once that split is made, the rest of the grid becomes easier to untangle.

Purple: the phrase-completion hook that decides the game

The Purple category—“Draw ___”—was the puzzle’s hinge. Each answer completes a common expression:

• draw near

• draw poker

• draw straws

• draw the line

This is a familiar Connections move: a short prompt word plus four completions that don’t resemble each other in meaning. That difference is exactly why the set can be hard to spot. “Near” looks like a location word, “poker” looks like a game, “straws” looks like an object, and “the line” looks abstract. They refuse to “group” until the blank is visible in your mind.

It also creates a common mistake pattern: players chase a category like “games” (poker), “tools” (straws), or “distance” (near), and burn a guess before they realize the shared connection is grammatical rather than semantic.

What today’s puzzle style signals

Feb. 9’s grid is a good example of how Connections balances accessibility with a single decisive twist. Two groups (Yellow and Green) are built for momentum. One group (Blue) is thematic and concrete once a key word pops. The last group (Purple) is the lock—often solvable only after you’ve cleared other categories and can finally see the remaining words as phrase endings rather than standalone nouns.

That pacing keeps the puzzle fair: the wordplay is there, but it’s contained to one quadrant of the solution. If you got stuck today, it likely wasn’t because any single word was obscure—it was because the puzzle asked you to switch reading modes at the end.

Sources consulted: New York Times Games, TechRadar, Forbes, Tom’s Guide