Times Links May 4, 2026 Number 1,058 to Connections Hints Today

connections hints today for May 4, 2026, No. 1,058 gave solvers four groups and one especially slippery purple set. The hardest answer pattern rewrote planet and dwarf planet names by changing the first letter.

No. 1,058 Purple Group

The purple group used planets and a dwarf planet with the first letter changed. Bluto stood in for Pluto. Cars stood in for Mars. Darth stood in for Earth. Genus stood in for Venus.

That kind of clue pushes players to stop reading for meaning and start reading for letter shifts. It is the sort of pattern that rewards anyone checking a finished grid against the day’s answers, not just anyone trying to solve in the moment.

Yellow, Blue, and Green

The yellow group was qualities of overcooked meat, with chewy, dry, stringy and tough as the answers. The blue group was play some electric guitar, with jam, noodle, shred and solo.

The green group was ingredients in bubble tea, with boba, milk, sugar and tea. Together, those three sets gave the puzzle a more familiar path before the letter-twisting purple group.

Times Games Progress

The Times has a Connections Bot like the one for Wordle. Registered Times Games players can track how many puzzles they have completed, their win rate, how many perfect scores they have posted and their win streak.

CNET also pointed readers to a difficult past Connections puzzle labeled #5 that included things you can set, such as mood, record, table and volleyball. For anyone looking at May 4’s grid after the fact, that kind of comparison gives a rough sense of how the game can jump from straightforward categories to wordplay that bends the first letter itself.