Lifehacker posted a spoiler-filled guide on Friday for New York Times Connections #1,125, giving players a quick way into the July 10 puzzle before they had to stare down the grid alone. Tim Mulkerin said he would share clues, tips, strategies, and the solutions to all four categories, then immediately warned readers that spoilers were ahead.
That is why the page matters now: Connections is a daily game, and the help people want changes every day with the board in front of them. On July 10, the yellow category was SMARTPHONE SETTINGS, with AIRPLANE MODE, DO NOT DISTURB, HOTSPOT, and LOCATION SERVICES, while the green group was DESSERT MENU DESCRIPTORS, built from DECADENT, FRESH-BAKED, MOLTEN, and À LA MODE. Mulkerin, a freelance writer, editor, and social media manager now pursuing a master's degree in communicative sciences and disorders from New York University while living in Brooklyn, New York, has worked in digital media and the tech world since 2016, and he framed the yellow set as the easiest of the bunch.
The rest of the page leans on the kind of structure puzzle players know well: a few breadcrumbs, then the payoff. One clue says all the “mode” tiles belong in separate categories today, which is the sort of warning that can save a run before it starts. Another says OUTKAST does not belong in the musician category, while MOLTEN is meant to read as part of a phrase like “MOLTEN lava cake,” and NEW ORDER is identified as the name of an English band. Those hints matter because the excerpt does not show the full blue and purple answers even though it promises the solutions to all four categories, leaving readers with enough to solve part of the board but not all of it.
That gap is the story’s real hook. Players get the cleanest path for the yellow and green groups, but they still have to work through the unanswered categories on their own, and the page’s best clue is that the trick is not vocabulary alone but where each word belongs. For anyone checking New York Times Connections on July 10, the guide gives just enough to keep the streak alive and just enough missing to make the final solve still feel like a game.
