Why Don’t FLIGHT, STAIR, STEP and LANDING Form a Connections Group?
In the September 18, 2026 NYT Connections puzzle, FLIGHT uses a food-and-drink meaning: a small assortment of servings meant for tasting. That puts it with MEDLEY, PLATTER and SAMPLER. The trap is that FLIGHT, STAIR, STEP and LANDING also form a perfectly real stair-related set. Connections does not deny that relationship. It simply uses a different meaning for each word.
Quick mapping
| Word | Stair meaning | Official use |
|---|---|---|
| FLIGHT | a flight of stairs | an assortment of food or drink |
| STAIR | one stair | STAIR + CASE = STAIRCASE |
| STEP | a step | a segment of a process |
| LANDING | a stair landing | part of an airplane flight |
Why does FLIGHT mean food or drink?
In restaurant and tasting-room language, a flight is a selection of small portions served together so you can compare them. Beer flights and wine flights are common examples.
That is why FLIGHT fits with MEDLEY, PLATTER and SAMPLER. Each word can describe an assortment rather than one single item.
Why the stair group looks so convincing
A flight can be a run of stairs. A stair is an individual step. A step is part of a staircase. A landing is the flat area where a staircase pauses or changes direction.
So the stair connection is real. The puzzle’s difficulty comes from polysemy: each word also has another meaning that completes a different four-word group.
Why isn’t FLIGHT in “Parts of a Flight”?
The puzzle also contains BOARDING, CRUISE, LANDING and TAKEOFF, which form the group PARTS OF A FLIGHT.
That creates a second trap. FLIGHT looks as though it should belong with those aviation words, but Connections uses FLIGHT in the tasting-assortment sense instead.
This makes FLIGHT the center of two plausible wrong paths at once: stairs and aviation.
The answer to remember
FLIGHT belongs with MEDLEY, PLATTER and SAMPLER because all four can describe assortments of food or drink.
FLIGHT, STAIR, STEP and LANDING are genuinely related to stairs, but that is not the relationship used by this puzzle.
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