FOURSURE

October 18, 2026 Puzzle Breakdown

Four groups, four words each — here's the connections between today's words.

Today kicked off with a trip to the shopping mall, where you would easily run into a department store, food court, movie theater, or restaurant. There was no real misdirection here, just a collection of standard commercial anchors designed to ease you into the puzzle. If you spent your teenage years wandering around a suburban plaza, this first set practically solved itself.

If these names gave you a sudden pang of nostalgia, you might want to brace yourself before checking a calendar. Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, The Killers, and Paramore all formed on the other side of the millennium, between 2001 and 2004. They make up the second-easiest group today, assuming your memory of the early aughts alt-rock scene is still intact.

You can put down the martinis, because these four were all titles of James Bond movies. Sliding in at rank three today, they might have looked like stray comic book villains or sci-fi gadgets until the 007 theme clicked. Goldfinger and Thunderball held down the Connery era, Moonraker sent Roger Moore into orbit, and Spectre brought Daniel Craig back to the fold.

Today’s most punishing category required a bit of wordplay violence. In cryptic puzzle terms, a beheadment simply means lopping off the first letter of a word to leave another valid word behind. Decapitate this quartet and you are left with host, hair, tone, and latitude.