Solution: Twisty Path

The best way to approach this puzzle is by completing the clue fill with all answers having 6 letters which can be aided by the ah-ha that the flavortext or associated emojis reveals an association with the cardinal directions. Each answer has exactly 3 directions (letters that are N, E, W, S).

We notice that we can find the non-direction letters for each answer next to each other in the grid, and in fact the directions in an answer form a path between its letters. At first, this is a bit confusing since the second direction letter is the direction from the first non-direction letter to the second and the third direction letter is the direction from the second non-direction letter to the third, but it's unclear what to do with the first direction letter. However, we can determine that the first direction letter is a path from the third non-direction letter of some other word in the grid (or from the (START) space positioned above the grid) to the first non-direction letter.

As an example, starting from START, we go south for the L in SELECT, east for the C, and east again for the T. (We go south-east-east due to SELECT having SEE). We then go east for the J of JERSEY, south for the R, and east for the Y. (Note that this also lets us distinguish WIDOWS and WINDOW, because they have different directions.) We can follow this path through the whole grid, ending with going east to C, south to R, and west to O for ESCROW.

Since the clues given in the puzzle are in alphabetical order, we can use this path as the new order.

Below is the corresponding table reordered by numbers 1-20 based on path order, with 1 being the (START) location given on the puzzle.

We can now move to the extraction grid. The first row is given as

Each clue is followed by 3 emojis. We notice that the clue SELECT is followed by 🧭🧭🔠, which if we fill in where L is the first emoji provided 🧭, C is the second emoji provided 🧭, and T is the third emoji provided 🔠, gives us the following first row. With J in the fourth cell being the first emoji provided for the JERSEY clue, we can fill it with the first emoji provided 🧭. We can continue to fill the emojis following the clues along the path to get the following extraction grid.

Interestingly, the emojis are compasses (🧭) and letters (🔠), and each row has three of each. We can assume that the compasses indicate cardinal directions (letters that are N, E, W, S) and the letters correspond to the rest of the alphabet. Each row having three of each can also remind us of the words in this puzzle, or we can galaxy-brain that there are twenty possible three-of-each compass-letter combinations and twenty words.

Through any of these methods, we can realize that the given first row, 🧭🧭🔠🧭🔠🔠, corresponds to SELECT. We then notice that the direction/letter patterns are unique and we can map each row to a word. This table below shows what the emoji-form clue answer would be for ALL clues, but only 10 of them actually appear in the extraction grid.

With each row corresponding to a Clue Answer, we can then notice that SELECT = A indicates that we should be leveraging the Path Order where (A=1, B=2…) because SELECT is the number 1 in our Path Order. Continuing to do this gives the answer ANGLERFISH.

Authors' Notes

This puzzle was initiated based on these following messages:

As the New York Times' Connections game grows in popularity, I find joy in annoyingly telling people that this puzzle is based on the “connections wall” round of Only Connect. More relevantly, here's the link to the Only Connect video in the screenshot above

After some initial bullying of chatGPT about cryptics and tossing around some other puzzle ideas, we returned to this idea. Naturally, we thought of navigating a letter maze (we have directions, why not use them!), using cardinal directions letters vs non-cardinal direction letters (we would like to use more than 4 letters of the alphabet), and leveraging the unique pattern somehow for extraction.

The most challenging part of making this puzzle once we settled on the idea was grid construction, I would imagine, but thanks to the power of code, Dan was able to generate a (somewhat) reasonable grid. The grid was fairly close to being impossible; the three emoji after each clue aren't constrained and choosing them appropriately allows for any desired ten-letter answer, but (as an example of an issue) any grid with this mechanic has a surplus of needed W's in the 20 words, making it hard to construct.

Thank you our playtesters, and hope you enjoyed the puzzle!