Connections Hints Feb 22, 2026: Puzzle #987 Clues, Answers, Categories, Tricky Words, and Complete Solution Guide

Need Connections hints Feb 22 players can use without wrecking the grid? Start here. Sunday’s board is puzzle #987, and it hides a presidential theme under four very plain words. Clues come first, and the full solution sits lower down, so you can stop reading the second you have enough.

The February 22 board splits into four themes: words for an outsider, ways to describe graying hair, classic newspaper comic strips, and things tied to Theodore Roosevelt. Purple holds the Roosevelt group. Sort the comic strips first, then the hair words, and the last eight tiles almost place themselves.

Puzzle #987 at a Glance

Detail	What you need to know
Puzzle number	#987
Date	Sunday, February 22, 2026
Board	16 tiles, four groups of four
Mistakes allowed	Four
Easiest group	Yellow, a plain synonym set
Hardest group	Purple, everything orbits one US president.
Trickiest single tile	BLONDIE, which fits two groups on sight
Next board	Just after midnight, your local time

Key Takeaways

• Yellow is a straight synonym group, so clear it early and buy yourself room.
• Green describes hair, not people, which is where most solvers slip.
• Blue wants newspaper comic strips, including two that ended decades ago.
• Purple is a person, not a topic. Name the person and all four tiles’ land.
• Five tiles on this board honestly belong to two groups at first glance.

All 16 words on the February 22 Board

Here is the full grid, listed alphabetically so the layout gives nothing away:

• BIG STICK, BLACK SHEEP, BLONDIE, BLOOM COUNTY
• BULL MOOSE, DISTINGUISHED, FLECKED, MISFIT
• OUTCAST, PEANUTS, REJECT, ROUGH RIDERS
• SALT-AND-PEPPER, SILVER, TEDDY BEAR, THE FAR SIDE

Connections Hints Feb 22 Look at the shape of those tiles before you read a single clue. Six of them are two or three words long, and one carries hyphens. Long tiles cluster. Here the multi-word tiles do most of the sorting for you. BIG STICK, BULL MOOSE, and ROUGH RIDERS all share a home, and so do BLOOM COUNTY and THE FAR SIDE.

Spoiler-Free Clues, One Per Color

These name the idea behind each group without naming a tile. Take one and go back to the board.

Color	Clue
Yellow	The person nobody saved a seat for.
Green	Four ways to say your hair is going gray, three of them flattering.
Blue	You met these on the folded page your parents handed you at breakfast.
Purple	The 26th president, and the things history pinned to his name.

Still stuck? That is normal on a Sunday board, so take one more pass before you burn a life. Our gaming coverage on TechPuffy has more puzzle and game explainers if you want a break from staring at the grid.

One word from each group

This tier is the last stop before the solution. Each line gives you a single confirmed tile.

• Yellow: REJECT
• Green: FLECKED
• Blue: BLOOM COUNTY
• Purple: BULL MOOSE

Connections Hints Feb 22: The Full Answers For #987

Spoiler warning. Everything below gives the board away. Turn back now if you still want the win.

Color	Category	The four tiles
Yellow	One who doesn’t fit in	BLACK SHEEP, MISFIT, OUTCAST, REJECT
Green	Descriptors for graying hair	DISTINGUISHED, FLECKED, SALT-AND-PEPPER, SILVER
Blue	Classic comic strips	BLONDIE, BLOOM COUNTY, PEANUTS, THE FAR SIDE
Purple	Associated with Theodore Roosevelt	BIG STICK, BULL MOOSE, ROUGH RIDERS, TEDDY BEAR

Those four groups match across every published solution we cross-checked before writing this so that you can trust the list. Purple was the group solvers reported struggling with, and the reason repays a minute of attention.

The Five Tiles That Pulled Solvers Two Ways

A good board never hides a word. It hides which group owns it. Five tiles on the February 22 grid read as perfectly reasonable members of a group they don’t belong to.

Tile	Where it looks like it belongs	Where it actually belongs
BLONDIE	Hair, obviously	Comic strips
SILVER	Comics, thanks to a certain surfer	Hair
DISTINGUISHED	A word you would use about a president	Hair
TEDDY BEAR	A toy, and toys get called misfits.	Roosevelt
PEANUTS	Slang for next to nothing, as in working for peanuts	Comic strips

fourth-hairBLONDIE is the sharpest of the five. It sits beside SALT-AND-PEPPER and SILVER, and a hair group with all three feels finished. Submit it, and you have burned a life on a board that was never going to give you a fourth hair word.

A solve order that works on boards like this one

This order is built for the shape of this grid rather than for luck. Try it before you guess.

1. Find the tiles that mean nothing on their own. “BIG STICK,” “BULL MOOSE,” and “ROUGH RIDER” are not everyday phrases, so they share a source.
2. Name the source out loud. Three of those phrases point straight at Theodore Roosevelt.
3. Now ask which leftover tile he owns. His name sits on the teddy bear, so that group is closed.
4. Take the comic strips next. Two of them are multi-word titles, which makes them easy to spot.
5. Sort the plain synonyms last. Whatever is left describes hair, and you never had to guess.

That third step is the whole trick. Solvers who submit the Roosevelt group without it usually swap TEDDY BEAR for DISTINGUISHED and lose a life. If you like working through methods like this, the how-to archives collect step-by-step walkthroughs across the site.

Why does purple keep doing this

Purple groups fall into a handful of repeating patterns, and “one person’s greatest hits” is among the most common. Editors pick a figure with a dense trail of nicknames, slogans, and mascots, then scatter four of them across the board. Roosevelt is a gift for that pattern. Big Stick diplomacy, the Bull Moose Party, the Rough Riders, and the teddy bear all carry his fingerprints.

So when three tiles feel like trivia rather than vocabulary, stop sorting words and start naming people. That habit transfers to tomorrow’s board, which is more than any single answer list gives you.

How the Game Works, and When the Next Board Lands

You get 16 tiles and four hidden groups of four. Four mistakes end the run, and the board reveals itself. A new grid appears just after midnight in your local time, and the puzzle number climbs by one each day.

Older grids live in the archive on the New York Times games site, listed by date, so a missed Sunday is recoverable. Your streak, though, is not: four wrong guesses break it, and finishing an archive board later does not repair the run. Most people play in a browser rather than the app. If the page freezes mid-board on a school or work machine, learning to restart your Chromebook properly saves the guess you were about to waste. Riders,

Make Sure You Have the Right February 22

February 22 comes around every year, and search results mix the years freely. The 2026 edition is game #987, played on a Sunday. Earlier February 22 boards carry lower numbers and completely different categories, so a category list alone will not tell you which one you are reading.

Check the date printed above the grid before you trust any hint page, including this one. If it says #987, everything above applies.

Conclusion

Connections Hints Feb 22 for Puzzle #987 become much easier once you recognize the four hidden themes and avoid rushing into tempting word matches. Start with the obvious outsider synonyms, separate the graying-hair descriptors, identify the classic comic strips, and save the Theodore Roosevelt group for last.

PayPay special attention to tricky tiles such as BLONDIE, SILVER, and TEDDY BEAR, which can easily lead you toward the wrong category. With these clues and the correct solve order, you can approach the February 22, 2026 Connections puzzle with fewer mistakes and a better chance of completing the grid successfully.

Frequently Asked Questions