NEW YORK — Sunday's edition of The New York Times' Connections puzzle sent players through categories built around family relationship terms, participants in a deal or venture, live music performances, and literal English translations of early human species names, in a grid that puzzle columnists rated as one of the trickier entries in recent weeks thanks to a deliberate piano-themed decoy.

Connections, published daily by the Times as part of its expanding suite of word games, presents 16 words or phrases that must be sorted into four hidden groups of four. Each group shares a common theme, and the puzzle is color-coded by difficulty, with yellow generally representing the most straightforward category and purple the most challenging. Players are permitted up to four incorrect guesses before the game ends.

Sunday's puzzle, numbered 1162, organized its 16 entries into four categories: words that modify family relationships, terms for a participant or party involved in something, synonyms for a live music performance, and literal translations of scientific names for early human species.

The yellow group, typically the easiest of the four, centered on prefixes commonly used to modify family relationship terms. It included "grand," "great," "half" and "step," four words that combine with terms like "mother," "aunt," "sister" and "father" to describe extended or non-immediate family relationships. Puzzle........

© International Business Times