[650]

[Spoiler] Here are three words: pine, crab, sauce. There’s a fourth word that combines with each of the others to create another common word. What is it?

YXBwbGU= (Use Base64 Decoding) [/Spoiler]

[whatevertrevor]

I've played enough NYT connections that this was immediate for me, at the expense of the promised "Aha!" moment. :D

[RheingoldRiver]

Interesting haha, I've played enough NYT connections that I would never have gotten it on my own because when I thought of the correct word with sauce, I thought "_ crab" ? no, can't be that...

[Dilettante_]

It's literally at the end of TFA

->https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-your-brain-creates-aha-mo...

[opan]

I went from thinking this was too hard to guess on the fly to suddenly getting it within a minute or two. Interesting.

If anyone wants an additional hint, the word you plug in here isn't put in the same spot for all three words.

[geuis]

Please, just provide the answer. Maybe it's obvious but to people like me all I can think of is recipes for butter sauces for crab legs involving pine nuts. Which actually sounds quite good.

[tmtvl]

It's something often compared to oranges.

[calmworm]

It is answered in the article.

[taneq]

They're deliberately avoiding spoilers, you can decode the answer by pasting YXBwbGU= into https://www.base64decode.org/