I’M ADDICTED.

I know many who are addicted to Wordle.  Including the Mister.  I’ve never tried it and don’t plan to at any time in the near future.  My personal, and relatively new, addiction is “Connections.”  Like Wordle, It’s one of the New York Times daily puzzles.

Connections, if you aren’t familiar with it, presents the player with a grid of 16 words. In that grid are four separate groups of words which share a connection with each other. A relatively simple “connection” might be the words “best,” ”cheers,” “love,” and “sincerely.” They’re “connected” to one another as “letter sign-offs”

I’m not great at the game but all those years of crossword puzzling have helped a bit. 

But now I’m worried.   And, as we all know, addiction and worry are not good companions.

Just recently I’ve noticed an uptick in Connections words that mean absolutely nothing to me.  Just exactly how am I supposed to “connect” them with any other words in the grid when I have no idea what they themselves mean?

Here’s a recent sampling of some of the strange....at least in my mind....words:

boba

taki

ken

opel

orgo

neti

Now, I ask you, are any of those words in YOUR vocabulary?  Because they most certainly are not in mine.  Alas.  And alack.  Stuff gets harder every day.