Puzzle number 1,204 of The New York Times' Connections game closed out the weekend Sunday with a grid mixing sculpture materials, restaurant seating options, telecom vocabulary and a wordplay category built around the endings of Chinese dynasty names, a combination puzzle guides described as playful but carrying more hidden traps than it first appeared.

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 Sunday's puzzle, here are hints for each category, organized loosely from easiest to hardest, without giving away the specific words involved.

One category groups together materials commonly used to create sculptures, the kind of vocabulary an art student or gallery visitor would recognize immediately. A second category brings together different types of seating options a host or server might offer at a restaurant, ranging from a communal booth to a simple stool. A third category groups together words associated with........

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