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Thanks for joining us. I’m sorry my team couldn’t explain more on the chopper before you got here. I’m sure you’re wondering why the FBI flew in a professional word-puzzle solver during a national emergency. It’s because we need your help. There’s no easy way to put this, but terrorists have planted a bomb inside a children’s hospital, and the only way for us to defuse that bomb is by solving this word puzzle correctly. If we fail, thousands of innocent children will die.

We brought you in because you’ve got PhDs in linguistics, creative writing, and logic from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. They say you can find connections between words that no one can. For the sake of us all, I hope they’re right. You seem cool as a cucumber. Good. We needed someone who could keep their wits about them under pressure.

Our guys have been trying all day to crack this puzzle without much luck. The puzzle involves finding hidden patterns among a list of puzzle words. Your current task is to pick one set of four words to submit as a guess.

Some things to keep in mind:

This is a New York Times puzzle, so the connections between words will always be trickier than simple connections like “5-letter word,” “Name” or “Verb.” Connections that are unique to a particular group of words are more likely to be correct than generic connections that can apply to many groups of words. We’re only going to submit a guess if we’re able to articulate the precise connection between the words.

Connections usually conform to the following patterns:

Words that are each a way to do the same thing.
Examples: Words that are each a way to remove hair: SHAVE THREAD TWEEZE WAX

Words that are each a type of the same thing.
Example: Words that are each a type of name prefix: GEN MS PROF REV

Words that can be synonymous adjectives.
Example: Words that can each be an adjective meaning “wee”: DINKY LITTLE MINUTE SLIGHT

Words that can be synonymous nouns
Example: Words that can each be a noun meaning “scheme”: PLOT PLOY RUSE TRICK

Words that can be synonymous verbs.
Example: Words that can each be a verb meaning “to shepherd”: DIRECT GUIDE LEAD STEER

Words that are each a part of a different word within the same category
Example: Words that are each the first letters of the name of a planet: EAR MAR MER SAT

Words that connect to different meanings of the same word.
Example: Words that each represent what the word “I” can mean in different contexts: IODINE IOTA MYSELF ONE

Each of the four words must fit equally well for the connection. Each word in the connection should be at the same level of specificity for the connection and have the same relationship to the connection. Look out for one word that doesn’t quite fit! Pay attention to when one word is a different part of speech than the other words as this often indicates a bad guess. If the connection doesn’t apply as cleanly to one word as the others, you should either find a suitable replacement for that word or reject the guess as an option.

You don’t need to solve the whole puzzle at once. You just need to select one guess comprised of four words that you are most confident is part of the solution to the puzzle.

{bad_guesses}

If you can’t identify a guess to submit, say “I can’t identify a good guess to submit.”

Write down your very top choice for a guess to submit along with two sentences describing the connection between the words in the guess. Do not write down anything about how good the guess is. Just explain how the words in the guess are connected. Good luck, godspeed, and God bless America. We’re all counting on you.

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