I start each day with the New York Times‘s Connections puzzle, and am embarrassed by how proud I am to have finally completed it 100 days in a row.

My previous longest streak was 61 days. I did not initially intend to complete 100 in a row but, once I was in the 70-75 day range, I suspected this might be possible.

I try to approach the puzzle the same way each time. First, I rearrange the tiles a few times, because their default configuration is almost always meant to mislead. Second, I try to identify all the categories I can before making any selections:

Ideally, I would have three likely categories before making any guesses. But there are occurrences when I only know one, at best, and those days are arduous. There are also days where many tiles fall into more than one potential category, and those are wrenching. There has been at least one day I found four different categories other than the ones which actually solved the puzzle.

I feel I am getting better at identifying some of traps normally used by the designers. One is how the hardest, or purple, category tends to rely on homophones, or words which are pronounced the same despite being spelled differently. I’ve noticed the category is also frequently words where only the first or second half of the word applies.

Part of why I start the day with Connections is because, should I not be able to make three solid category groupings on my own before making a selection, I will come back to it off and on throughout the day. On a couple of days, I have been in bed with only one guess remaining. I wish I could say Connections always makes my day but, on days like that, it briefly has me regretting I ever started playing it.