Connexions by AB

This stub entry serves the dual purpose of documenting a phase of obsession in my life with NYT's Connections word game, and at the same time, memorializing a trio of college mates with whom I discussed the puzzle every day for almost an entire semester. If they read this, they know who they are. Cheers, A and S!

In the recent past, my imagination has been gripped by the New York Times' viral sensation word game, Connections. It has become an affliction of sorts of mine to daily break my head over this puzzle; although the varying difficulty also causes you to feel a different genre of annoyance, succinctly expressed by the thought "Why was this too easy today?" accompanied by a momentary feeling of emptiness, because mentally you plan to allocate a certain amount of time to the thrill of solving the puzzle, and you then can't help but feel short-changed when the lack of complexity leads to a zippy solution. You won, but you feel lost.

At the peak of my obsession with this puzzle, I wasn't satisfied with the limited frequency that a mere daily version of Connections offered. Like an addict, I sought more. And when that did not seem enough, I resolved to synthesize my concoction of Connections using a third-party website that allows you to do just that. Here are two versions of the same. In hindsight, they aren't exactly brilliant. Also, to sound clever, I have replaced "ct" with and x in the name (Connecticut treasure map?).

Connexions #1

Connexions #2

 

Edit: I had planned to add more than two puzzles here, but by the time I got around to making new ones, my interest in the whole enterprise had diminished sufficiently that I couldn't muster a bother. The fickleness of youth robs the world of masterpieces; it is a lamentable experience, yet it is to be wryly accepted and not questioned at length.