Puzzle number 1,201 of The New York Times' Connections game challenged solvers Thursday with a grid blending Halloween costume pieces, spring-loaded objects, gestures involving pointing, and a set of wordplay-based anagrams, giving the day's puzzle an unusually playful mix of categories.

Connections presents players with 16 words that must be sorted into four hidden groups of four, with each group sharing a common category. The puzzle rates each group's difficulty using a color system: yellow for the most straightforward connection, green for slightly trickier, blue for more difficult, and purple, typically the most wordplay-heavy or misleading group, as the hardest.

For those still working through Thursday's puzzle, here are hints for each category, organized from easiest to hardest, without giving away the specific words involved.

The yellow category groups together items associated with a classic Halloween costume built around a certain nocturnal, blood-drinking creature. The green category brings together objects and toys that share a common mechanical feature involving stored and released energy. The blue category, traditionally more difficult, connects words and phrases tied to a shared physical gesture involving an extended digit. The purple category, usually the trickiest of the four, groups together words and phrases that can........

© International Business Times