Press enter to skip to main content.

⚠️  Note

This is an archived version of the 2025 Key Clues Challenge website. For information on the upcoming event, visit https://keyclueschallenge.uwaterloo.ca/.

Back to the puzzle

Solution: Connect Four
Answer: REGROUP

Written by The Enigmatologists

The puzzle presents seventeen sets of four clues; each set has a specific "connection" as the answer. These seventeen connections can be organized as the first three terms of seven sequences (with repeats), leading to a fourth term of the sequence. Each term in a box contains the letter shown, with the positions of the letters forming another sequence. Using this, one can extract a letter from the fourth term of each sequence to get REGROUP.

Connections

  1. MAY. The 25th of May is Towel Day, 23rd of May is Turtle Day, 12th of May is Nurses Day, 4th of May is Star Wars Day.

  2. CLUB. Arsenal and Real Madrid are football clubs. Studio 54 and Fabric are night clubs. 5 wood and 9 iron are golf clubs. Oprah's and Reese's are book clubs.

  3. JACK. These are 4 movies called Jack, their year of release, and the actor who played the title character.

  4. KING. The clues are bowling PIN, Hong KONG, Super Mario MAKER, and Carrie FISHER. All 4 words can follow KING to form another word or phrase.

  5. RUBY. All four phrases have the same initials R.U.B.Y.

  6. APRIL. These are titles of songs from the album April by the band Sun Kil Moon.

  7. BLACK. These are the etymologies of chemical elements, going from their full name to their symbols. Borax refers to Boron, with symbol B. To lie hidden refers to Lanthanum, with symbol La. Charcoal refers to Carbon, with symbol C. Potash refers to Potassium, with symbol K. Combining the symbols in order to get BLaCK.

  8. BROWN. YouTubers with surname containing Brown. TBJZL is Tobi Brown, pogobat is Dan Brown, GMTK is Mark Brown, and MKBHD is Marques Brownlee.

  9. HEART. These songs all have HEART in their titles: Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Heart of Gold, Don't Go Breaking My Heart, My Heart Will Go On.

  10. MAJOR. Steven Spielberg graduated college with an English major. Joe Biden's dog is named Major. Mozart's symphony nicknamed Jupiter is in C major. The US Open is one of the four majors in golf.

  11. MARCH. The women depicted are MEG Ryan, JO Brand, BETH Hart, and AMY Poehler. The first names are also the names of the MARCH sisters in the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

  12. QUEEN. Thermometer is MERCURY. 22: Goth is MAY (referencing connection 1). Made in golf is TAYLOR, referring to the golf brand TaylorMade. Claybourne in the show Nashville has first name DEACON. The four names are the members of the band QUEEN.

  13. UNION. All four words can precede UNION to form a phrase.

  14. LUTHER. In the show Luther, these are season and episode numbers of the character that was killed.

  15. MARTIN. The pictures refer to MARIN Headlands, MARTINI, MARVIN the MARTIAN. Perform the letter operation to get MARTIN.

  16. COLLEGE. The clues refer to answers in this puzzle. King's College in Cambridge, Queen's College in New York, Union College in Queensland, Luther College in Regina.

  17. DIAMOND. These are movies whose plot involves stolen diamonds.

Sequences

  1. MAJOR ↠ BROWN ↠ MAY ↠ TRUSS. These are successive UK Prime Ministers, skipping one each time. R is the 5th letter of MAJOR, W is the 4th letter of BROWN, Y is the 3rd letter of MAY. Extract the 2nd letter of TRUSS to get R.

  2. JACK → QUEEN → KING → ACE. These are ranks of playing cards. C, E, N are the third letters of JACK, QUEEN, KING. Extract the 3rd letter of ACE to get E.

  3. BLACK → DIAMOND → RUBY → GOLD. These are the first half of Pokemon games in reverse order (Black and White, Diamond and Pearl, Ruby and Sapphire, Gold and Silver). C, A, U are the 4th, 3rd, 2nd letters of BLACK, DIAMOND, RUBY. Extract 1st letter of GOLD to get G.

  4. MAY → APRIL → MARCH → FEBRUARY. These are months of the year in reverse order. M, R, H are the 1st, 3rd, 5th letters of MAY, APRIL, MARCH. Extract the 7th letter of FEBRUARY to get R.

  5. COLLEGE ↠ QUEEN ↠ UNION ↠ OSGOODE. These are stations on the yellow line in the Toronto subway system, going south from College, skipping one station each term. C, U, I are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd letters of COLLEGE, QUEEN, UNION. Extract the 4th letter of OSGOODE to get O.

  6. MARTIN → LUTHER → KING → JUNIOR. Name of a famous American activist. I, H, N are the 5th, 4th, 3rd letters of MARTIN, LUTHER, KING. Extract the 2nd letter of JUNIOR to get U.

  7. CLUB → DIAMOND → HEART → SPADE. These are suits of playing cards in Bridge order (or alphabetical). L, I, E are the 2nd letters of CLUB, DIAMOND, HEART. Extract the 2nd letter of SPADE to get P.

Authors' Notes

This puzzle is inspired by the brilliant British quiz show Only Connect. Every episode is filled with puzzling delights, and it is highly recommended viewing for all puzzle hunters.

The earliest draft of this puzzle was titled Merely Link (a rewording of Only Connect). It was much smaller with only four connections spelling RGRP, and had a missing vowels portion that involved finding the menu option REGROUP in PowerPoint. This was dropped as PowerPoint is just... boring 🙂 (and other reasons).

(This puzzle has nothing to do with the New York Times' Connections game, which is a ripoff of Only Connect 🙂.)