NYT Connections decided not to use words. Players are not OK.

Connections pulled off a classic game design trick this week: showing the player a challenge they’ve never seen before, but have been unknowingly preparing for all this time.

The popular New York Times puzzle game, in which players generally are responsible for grouping a bunch of random words into hidden categories, threw quite a curveball on Wednesday, May 6. If you haven’t checked it out yet, today’s puzzle is a bit strange in that it doesn’t include any words at all.

Instead, it’s a bunch of mundane object symbols.

Uh… what?
Credit: Screenshot: The New York Times

The puzzle actually makes some sense if you do what I did and just look for the answers, but for daily Connections players it will obviously be a tougher challenge than usual. Of course, netizens had some real thoughts on this. Mostly very negative thoughts, to be precise.

It turns out that people Really don’t like it when you play with their New York Times daily game routine.

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But there was at least one person who thought it was pretty cool.

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Let’s hope that tomorrow’s puzzle is still just words.

Not the day you are looking for? Here is the solution to yesterday’s connections.