Permanent answer & walkthrough (Pinpoint Today archive)
Pinpoint Answer Today asks: what links Boxing, May, Labor, Mother's, and New Year's — and what story do they share? Follow the spoiler-safe hints one by one, then reveal the final connection and see how each clue fits together.
Boxing May Labor Mother's — What connects Boxing, May, Labor, Mother's?
LinkedIn Pinpoint #552 Answer:
Detailed breakdown continues just below - keep scrolling
Today’s LinkedIn Pinpoint puzzle kicks off with Boxing and May, immediately suggesting a connection to holidays or the months of the year. This feels like a straightforward, almost obvious path at first. However, the third clue, Labor, introduces a subtle wrinkle that starts to challenge the ‘holiday’ idea and pushes you to look for a more consistent, underlying relationship between all the words.
Words related to holidays
This is the most tempting wrong path. 'Labor' (Labor Day) and 'New Year's' (New Year's Day) strongly suggest holidays. However, 'Boxing' only works if you assume 'Boxing Day', and 'May' only works as 'May Day', which is less common. The theme breaks because the clues are parts of a phrase, not standalone holidays, and it fails to account for the structural relationship.
Types of work or activity
This theory starts strong. 'Boxing' and 'Labor' are both types of work or intense physical activity. The theme holds up for two clues but completely collapses with 'May', 'Mother's', and 'New Year's', which have no direct connection to a type of work. A theme breaking on three of the five clues is a clear sign to abandon it.
Things that come in a year
Driven by 'May' and 'New Year's', one might think the theme is tied to the calendar or months. While these two fit, the clue 'Boxing' has no direct relationship to the sequence of a year, and 'Mother's' only relates if you already know the answer. This theory breaks on at least three of the five clues.
Grammar & flow: pairing the connector with Boxing, May, Labor, and Mother's produces everyday English and keeps number/tense intacta strong signal that "Words that come before 'Day' to form special occasions" is the right lens for today's LinkedIn Pinpoint answer.
Coverage check: the same connector explains every clue without exceptions. Competing ideas either break on edge cases or demand awkward hyphenations, so "Words that come before 'Day' to form special occasions" wins on simplicity and reach.
| Word | Origin | In Context (Usage) | Meaning & Usage |
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The Obvious Answer is a Trap
This board cleverly leads you to guess ‘holidays’. When the clues seem to fit a common category like ‘U.S. federal holidays’, test your theory rigorously. When you find a clue like ‘May’ that doesn’t fit perfectly, it’s a signal that you’re on the wrong path and need to look for a different, more structural connection.
Isolate the Outlier
When your theory starts to feel shaky, identify which clue is the problem. I thought about ‘Labor’ as a concept, not a holiday, and ‘Mother’s’ as a possessive noun, not a day. Isolating these oddities helped break my first assumption and guided me toward the ‘wordplay’ side of the puzzle.
Look for a Consistent Pairing
The solution emerged when I tested if every clue could consistently pair with the same word. If you have a working theory for one or two clues, try to apply it to the toughest one on the board. If ‘Boxing’ works with ‘Day’, immediately see if ‘May’ and ‘Labor’ do the same. This test can confirm or refute your idea very quickly.
The connector is: Words that come before ‘Day’ to form special occasions. For example, ‘Boxing’ creates Boxing Day, and ‘Mother’s’ creates Mother’s Day.
While the final phrases are all holidays, the clues themselves are not. ‘May’ and ‘Labor’ are just words that, when paired with ‘Day’, form a holiday. The connection must be about the structure of the clue words themselves, not the concepts they are associated with.
The connector would still hold true, as ‘New’ comes before ‘Year’s Day’. However, the puzzle uses ‘New Year’s’ as a single unit to make the connection to ‘Day’ more direct and recognizable, forming the common phrase ‘New Year’s Day’.
