Connections - Yankee Doodle Dandy

[ThePoshUns]

New thread for the eternally frustrated

American childhood from the 70s to the 90s was the key to the weird Purple one.

Purple was ridiculous

Connections
Puzzle #458
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Puzzle #458
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Had to Google one of the purples.

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Puzzle #458
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I did not like today's.

I agree.

I can 'kind of' forgive them the odd NBA or NHL or NFL reference, but when it's so niche, it just makes me think of the America of old when I was living there and people would say things like "oh, so you have a passport". And: "Gosh, your English is so good, considering you're from Europe".

I mean, just so insular.

I imagine the puzzle makers as never having stepped out of the NYT office when they throw in words like that!

(Ha - that puzzle got to me today!)

Edit to add sorry meant to quote @CurlewKate

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@commonground - I disagree.

I think if we want to play a word game set by an American newspaper for their American audience, we need to take it on the chin that sometimes we will just not know an answer that has a cultural context.

Only Connect often has connections that rely on a knowledge of British 70s and 80s tv or something similar. That’s ok, that’s who the quiz is for.

This week’s involved firemen from Trumpton, for example. I have never seen Trumpton; I did not grow up here.

Not knowing a cultural reference doesn’t mean the game is being parochial or insular. It’s just using a reference you lack.

Ha, I was being grumpy and I do concur. It's only a puzzle!

But, also...the NYT has an active global reach and the puzzle is available worldwide.

I think a great puzzle speaks for itself. There should always be an 'aha'. Or a 'ooh that's clever' moment. Mostly the puzzle does this. But when very niche words are thrown in, it kind of throws you out of the puzzle and makes you think more about the setters than the content. (IMHO!)

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Puzzle #458
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The annoying thing about purple is I do know the reference cos of 'Being Rather Online' but my brain would never have gone there from the off.

I think their belligerent need to have hyper American clues is more jarring than Only Connect cos OC is on British TV aimed at a British audience with British contestants. Connections is online, it's global & the NYT will happily take ppls money (I had ads for more than a month in £s) to play their games. It's not that rare for them to use British meanings & British English as red herrings but very very rare to use them as actual clues.

And to me that's the difference, I feel they are poking fun at us for playing their Very American game, 'well what do you expect, hmmm?'

I'm still bloody playing it though!!

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I feel strangely smug about this 😂

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I would ordinarily have also been annoyed about the purples (although I don't know of the reference people have mentioned, I just felt like 3 of the words flowed nicely and the 4th didn't fit in the same context so it felt clunky and meant to trip us up) but I loved the blues so much and was delighted it was an actual group, not the red herring I expected!

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Being chronically online pays off sometimes, got purple instantly

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Like others - I don't get one of the purples. Spotted the other 3 straight off. Going to google now to find out relevance of the fourth one .

I suppose if you didn't know it, then blue would be an annoying one!

Having now googled the purple, I can see it would be quite obvious to someone growing up with that cultural reference.

4 out of 5 difficulty. Haven't seen that before.

Purple was very purpley today.

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Pfft. Utterly disastrous .

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Connections
Puzzle #459
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Puzzle #459
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annoyingly the purple connection crossed my mind but I didn't go with it/see all 4 and ended up guessing.

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Fuck off

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