You know you’ve made it to the big time when you’ve found your way into a game of The New York Times’s popular Connections puzzle. Clearly, Apple TV’s dystopian sci-fi office show Severance has made it big.
Today’s Connections puzzle includes some fun Severance Easter Eggs, though fans of the show might be fooled by the grid, which looks like this:
As a huge Severance fan, and someone who covers both NYTs puzzles and the show on a regular basis, I was certainly fooled into grouping Mark, Helena, Irving and Dylan together on my first guess. The four characters, played by Adam Scott, Britt Lower, John Turturro and Zach Cherry, make up the four core members of Lumon’s MDR team in the series. They are both “innies” on the Severed Floor at Lumon and “outies” when they lead their normal lives in the outside world.
The show’s concept is deceptively simple: Lumon Industries has come up with a controversial technology called “severance” which can split your work consciousness from the rest of you, leaving you to basically lead a life without labor. This has the insidious consequence of creating what is effectively a separate person entirely, a person who only lives at work. Lumon, of course, has its own nefarious plans in mind, though what those are remain at the core of the show’s many mysteries.
In any case, I was very much fooled into lumping these four names together on my first guess and that was, naturally, incorrect. I’ll give you a hint: Two of the names do group together, though not because they’re part of the MDR team.
Lumon itself is also a word on today’s Connections grid, though again this is not because of an actual connection to Severance. One more hint: You’ll have to change the word a bit to get it to fit with the others in its category.
In any case, this is a fun puzzle that fits nicely with some other recent NYTs puzzles in speaking directly to my own personal interests. Today’s Mini Crossword includes a reference to Call Of Duty, and yesterday’s had both Nintendo and Lord of the Rings-related words. I guess the paper’s Games section is just going full-blown nerd culture this week and, as the kids say, I’m here for it!
You can read my review of Severance Season 2 right here. I also just recapped and reviewed the latest episode of the show right here. If you’re not watching this show yet, please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. It’s genuinely the best thing on TV.
