LinkedIn Pinpoint 514 Answer & Analysis

The everyday trick hiding in plain sight

I stared at the first clue—Time—and did the classic thing: overthink it. History? Physics? Sci-fi? It felt wide open. Then Ice dropped, and my brain veered toward kitchens and summer. Two clues in, zero traction. That’s Pinpoint: gentle words, sneaky connection. (If you’re new, Pinpoint is LinkedIn’s daily word-association puzzle: five clues, one shared category. You win by naming the category fast.

The obvious trap

With Sewing, the mental noise gets louder. Now I’ve got a craft room, a freezer, and a time loop fighting for attention. It’s tempting to chase narratives—eras, materials, even idioms. That’s the trap: you look for story when you need structure.

The breakthrough

Vending lands, and everything snaps. This isn’t a story—it’s a scaffold. I stop asking “What do these words mean?” and start asking “What do they sit in front of?” I test a hunch aloud: vending… machine. Then Automatic Telling shows up (think “automated teller,” i.e., ATM), and the pattern is undeniable. Today’s theme is compound words that fit the same tail.

The cascade of confirmation

• Time → time machine (a term popularized by H. G. Wells’s 1895 novella).
• Ice → ice machine (a packaged appliance for making/distributing ice).
• Sewing → sewing machine (standardized and popularized via Singer’s 1851 design).
• Vending → vending machine (automated retail; modern versions date to 1880s England).
• Automatic Telling → automated teller machine (ATM; “cash machine” in UK usage).

The reveal

🏆 Answer: Words that can come before “machine.”
(Clues: Time, Ice, Sewing, Vending, Automatic Telling.)

A quick, human-sized deep dive

Time machine. Wells didn’t just write about it—he gave the world the phrase that reset how we imagine time travel. That’s why “time machine” clicks instantly when you’re thinking compounding, not concepts. Ice machine. In hotels and restaurants, a “packaged” ice machine bundles refrigeration, controls, and dispensing—plug, plumb, push.
Sewing machine. Singer’s refinements in the 1850s made home and factory stitching reliable and fast, which is why “sewing machine” feels like the canonical example.
Vending machine. From postcards in 1880s England to snacks and coffee today, it’s the archetype of “put money in, get stuff out.”
ATM (cash machine). Different countries, different names—“cashpoint,” “hole in the wall”—but the function is the same: instant self-service banking.

What today taught me

When clues feel random, stop chasing meaning and look for grammar. Shared suffixes and clean compounds often outrun big themes. Today, the win came from switching lenses—from story to structure—and letting pattern do the heavy lifting. And yes, I’ll be looking for “-machine,” “-board,” and “-line” tails a lot sooner tomorrow.