Yeah, I felt the same way about Strands. It was too hard to just guess rhyming words and find them. I also found connections to be rather easy though I also could not guess the purple.
You should have liked today’s strands, you were pretty dam good at it. Took me three hints, and that was WITH assuming (on and off) that the “O” sound was likely the common link. Would of easily gotten the mini straight through, never even needing the down clues, except for 1 Across I put “Spout” instead of “Straw”
Perfect Connections! I took the bait and tried computer words though they didn't go very well together. Eventually I got all group definitions. Good Mini. I solved it in 54 seconds. Nice Strands. My solve was hard perfect but it was slow (just to rhyme).
My theory for purple was "things associated with 'gig'": comedians have gigs, large numbers of bytes can be measured in gigs, a gig is a kind of horse-drawn carriage that can be used with a bridle, and drills are often used with jigs, which is way too close to be wrong. I think they might have found Connections harder due to HOST, SERVER, RAM, and BYTE being there and not a category? Have to see if red herrings that you could lock in increase the rating as compared to other tricks. I found Strands pretty easy due to seeing DOUGH quickly, thinking of rhymes, and looking for RHYME plus something for the span-a-gram. I thought the span-a-gram then made most of the other words stick out.
I got Blue and Yellow and then ended up failing, but I managed to get the Mini in 25 seconds and the Strands was a struggle but I eventually got it once I realized they were rhyming words.
