Friday's New York Times Connections puzzle sent players hunting through positive feelings, retro slang, passive-aggressive behaviors and a clever phonetic wordplay twist, delivering one of the more well-rounded and enjoyable grids of the week heading into the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Puzzle number 1,118 centered on four distinct themes that required a mix of vocabulary knowledge, cultural familiarity and lateral thinking about pronunciation. Here is a full breakdown of every category and every answer.

The yellow group, typically the most accessible of the four, gathered words representing positive feelings: BLISS, ELATION, FELICITY and JOY. All four words describe states of happiness or emotional wellbeing, making them relatively easy to identify once players........

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