Today's Connections Hints & Answers For June 26, 2024 (Puzzle #380)

Today's puzzle presents a fair amount of challenge, with the two harder categories being a little difficult to discern when looking at the words. The two hardest categories also have a fair amount of words that could be used in both places without too much extra thinking on our part, making it easy to get the puzzles messed up.

Forming is fun and you can form a different type of connection in the NYT puzzle , where you can connect the dots between lines to create a picture. And after all, is not a picture worth more than a thousand words? It is also very relaxing and very fulfilling when you successfully complete a puzzle.

This tricky little five by five crossword isn't always as easy as it looks; here are a couple easy tips and tricks to beat your friends' times!

There is a lot to be said for just knowing the category names of today's puzzle, as the last two should make much more sense and you should be able to group words accordingly when you do. To learn this information a little earlier than everyone else, check out the category names in the table below.

ARMY RANKS

PLACE TO PLUG SOMETHING IN

CONSUMER DESIRE, COLLECTIVELY

___ AD

ARMY RANKS

CAPTAIN

GENERAL

MAJOR

PRIVATE

It was actually PRIVATE and CAPTAIN that tipped us off here, as GENERAL and MAJOR could be very different words and are often used in other senses more often. However, with the presence of two lower ranks mentioned earlier, it was not as hard to figure out that the PRIVATE and CAPTAIN were part of a more military-coded category. And as it turned out, we were right.

PLACE TO PLUG SOMETHING IN

JACK

OUTLET

PORT

SOCKET

This one was a fairly quick answer after the last category after seeing JACK, OUTLET, and SOCKET. The PORT word was in an odd place for us and took a moment to locate, but once we did we very excitedly submitted our answer. Remember you can always shuffle the words around if, like us, you cannot see the trees from the forest as we search for words.

The Tiles game for