NYT Connections Hints, Answers & Clues - Sat, April 25, 2026

ENAMEL, HAIR, NAIL, and SKIN are all natural coverings of the human body — each one a distinct layer or structure that protects or coats us from the outside world.

ENAMEL

Tooth enamel is the hard mineralised outer coating of teeth — the hardest substance the human body produces, and a body covering in the most literal sense.

HAIR

Hair grows from follicles in the skin and covers much of the body — a natural protective and insulating covering.

NAIL

Fingernails and toenails are hard protective plates made of keratin that cover the tips of digits — a body covering, not a metal fastener here.

SKIN

The skin is the body's largest organ and its primary outer covering — the most straightforward entry in this group.

CROWD, HAYSTACK, MILLION, and OCEAN are all words used in common idioms to express an overwhelming, uncountable mass — each one slots into a familiar phrase that signals scale or impossibility.

CROWD

Used in idioms like 'lost in the crowd' to mean an undifferentiated, overwhelming mass of people.

HAYSTACK

From 'needle in a haystack' — the haystack represents a vast, unsearchable mass that makes finding anything inside it nearly impossible.

MILLION

Used in idioms like 'a million reasons' or 'one in a million' to mean an uncountably large number — not a precise figure but a signal of overwhelming scale.

OCEAN

Used in idioms like 'a drop in the ocean' to mean a mass so vast that any individual contribution is negligible.

COPPER, DICK, FLATFOOT, and GUMSHOE are all vintage informal terms for police officers or detectives, drawn from the slang of early-to-mid 20th century crime fiction and street language.

COPPER

19th-century British and American slang for a police officer — the most widely known term in this group, possibly derived from the copper badges early officers wore.

DICK

Old slang for a detective or private investigator — common in noir fiction and films of the 1930s and 1940s.

FLATFOOT

Slang for a uniformed beat cop — the term evokes the flat-footed plodding walk of an officer walking a patrol route.

GUMSHOE

Slang for a detective, originally referring to the rubber-soled (gum-soled) shoes a detective wore to move silently while tailing a suspect.

CAST IRON, CHUCK E. CHEESE, HURLY-BURLY, and PITCHFORK each begin with a word that is a synonym for throw — CAST, CHUCK, HURL, and PITCH — hidden inside familiar compound words or brand names.

CAST IRON

CAST is a synonym for throw — to cast a fishing line, to cast a stone — and CAST IRON is the heavy cookware material whose name starts with that word.

CHUCK E. CHEESE

CHUCK is an informal synonym for throw — to chuck something means to toss it — and Chuck E. Cheese is the well-known children's pizza-and-arcade restaurant chain whose name begins with it.

HURLY-BURLY

HURL is a synonym for throw — to hurl something is to throw it forcefully — and HURLY-BURLY is an old word for noisy commotion or uproar, with HURLY derived from that same root.

PITCHFORK

PITCH is a synonym for throw — to pitch a baseball, to pitch hay — and PITCHFORK is the long-handled farm tool whose name begins with that word.