Connections today: Puzzle #976 leans on romance, finance, and “roller” wordplay

Wednesday’s Connections puzzle (#976) delivered a clean, theme-forward grid that rewarded players who could quickly separate “words you feel” from “words you calculate,” then finish with a classic fill-in-the-blank trick. The set also highlighted a recurring design choice in the game: keeping two categories straightforward, one category slightly abstract, and saving the last for a phrase-based misdirection.

The answers below reflect the completed groupings for Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026 (ET).

Today’s completed categories and words

Why the romance group snapped into place

The “Act lovestruck” set is a satisfying example of the game using verbs with overlapping emotional texture rather than strict synonyms. Three of the four (PINE, SWOON, YEARN) are common in modern speech, while MOON can feel slightly old-fashioned—yet it still lands instantly once a player recognizes the “pining over someone” meaning.

The trap here was emotional spillover: players might try to pair SWOON with CAKE (as in “swoon-worthy dessert”) or MOON with PUCK (hockey imagery). The grid’s strongest clue was that all four function cleanly as verbs describing a kind of infatuated behavior.

The finance cluster that looked too easy

“Earnings” is the puzzle’s most direct group, built from terms that show up in investing, economics, and everyday conversation. NET and RETURN are especially common in sports and school contexts too, which created a mild risk of cross-contamination with PUCK, RINK, or DERBY.

The clean separation is that each word can point to a measurable payoff:

• GAIN as an increase

• NET as what remains after deductions

• RETURN as what comes back over time

• YIELD as the rate of income produced

This category often becomes a “stabilizer” in the grid: once players lock it in, the remaining sets narrow quickly.

“Compact mass” and the shape-shift trick

“Compact mass” is the category that feels simple only after it’s solved. BLOCK and BRICK are obvious physical chunks. CAKE is the clever hinge—because it can be a dessert, but it’s also used as a noun for a compressed form (think “a cake of…” in various contexts). PUCK completes the idea as a dense, compact object with a clear, standardized shape.

This group also served as the day’s biggest misdirection engine, because PUCK naturally tempts players toward RINK, and CAKE tempts players toward SWOON. The intended resolution is a tactile one: four things you can picture as a firm, compact unit.

The “ROLLER ___” finish that decided the solve

The purple category used a classic mechanic: a single word that can pair with four different endings to form common phrases. Once COASTER and DERBY start to look like the same type of construction, the rest falls into place.

ROLLER BAG is especially modern and travel-coded, while ROLLER COASTER and ROLLER RINK are familiar to nearly everyone. ROLLER DERBY has strong cultural recognition and locks the set.

This is also the kind of category where timing matters. Many players can sense the blank, but still spend a guess or two trying “ICE ___” or “HOCKEY ___” because PUCK and RINK pull the grid toward sports.

What today’s puzzle signals for the week ahead

Puzzle #976 continued a recent pattern: approachable surface words, then a final category that tests how quickly players shift from “definition matching” to “phrase building.” If future grids keep this balance, the best strategy remains to secure the most concrete group early (today: the finance terms or the physical chunks), then treat the remaining words as candidates for a shared construction rather than a shared meaning.

The larger takeaway: the game is at its most satisfying when it doesn’t rely on obscure trivia. Today’s difficulty came from overlap and misdirection—not from rare vocabulary—making the “aha” moment feel earned rather than researched.

Sources consulted: The New York Times; Forbes; Parade; TechRadar