Kaz and I both enjoy playing New York Times’s Connections. It is a nice puzzle for me to solve each morning. However, I have been a bit irked at how much it obviously borrows from Only Connect‘s “Connecting Wall.”

While I appreciate you cannot copyright gameplay algorithms and mechanics [we’ll leave the idea of Nintendo having a patent on fall damage for a later date], the fact that a “homage” to Only Connect‘s “Connecting Wall” was called Connections is perhaps a bit on the nose. When the style of gameplay and three of the four colors are obviously in line (an image of a potentially actual (?) Connecting Wall , found on Wikipedia):

I had a bit of a smirk this morning when today (2025-10-27)’s Connections puzzle started with the following in-joke [it is semi frequent that a few fun messages like this are embedded]:

JUSTICE!

Obviously, I am being a bit cheeky but I found it very nice.

And to shout to the Connections team, I appreciate they have found a way to take the format and make the puzzles mostly approachable. Only Connect is the only game show I have ever seen that regularly leaves me feeling like a complete idiot. It’s that good.

I would not thrive in a Connecting Wall environment.

Credits

The image from Only Connect was taken from the Wikipedia article linked above and is credited as by Wdcf – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22950288.

The screenshot from Connections was taken by me. Featuring content from October 27, 2025’s Connections #869 by Wyna Liu.