Connections hints and answers are here.
Looking for Saturday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
It’s another lovely Sunday, though it’s especially lovely for your humble Sunday Connections guide, as I’ve crossed the pond on a little holiday in Scotland. I’m writing this from my hotel room in Edinburgh. It’s my first time over here, and I’m eager to hit the cobbled streets of Old Town and go explore. So let’s solve this Connections!
How To Play Connections
Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.
The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.
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There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.
You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers.
Today’s Connections
- Almost
- Athletic
- Open
- Close
- Warm
- Flexible
- Excellent
- Exercise
- Area
- Drill
- One
- Game
- Easy
- Assignment
- Not Quite
- Lesson
Today’s Bonus Clue: The purple group is really annoying today. I don’t like the explanation given for the words in this group at all. So if you want this extra hint, read on. But be warned this is an Extra Spoiler for today’s Connections. The extra hint: This involves the letter ‘A’.
Hints for the Connections groups today are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Words that apply to people training, either in school or possibly a sports team.
- 🔵Blue group – You might say this if someone asks you if you’d like to do something. “I’m ….”
- 🟢Green group – Things you might say to indicate that someone is getting closer to a solution.
- 🟣Purple group – If Adultery was one of the words in this puzzle, it would go in this group. (I’m invoking The Scarlet Letter here).
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Tasks for a student.
- 🔵Blue group– Encouraging responses in a guessing game.
- 🟢Green group – Up for anything.
- 🟣Purple group – What “A” might mean.
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Assignment, Drill, Exercise, Lesson
- 🔵Blue group – Almost, Close, Not Quite, Warm
- 🟢Green group – Easy, Flexible, Game, Open
- 🟣Purple group – Area, Athletic, Excellent, One
Today’s Connections
While this was a bit trickier as far as Connections go, I managed to do it all without any mistakes. I got yellow first, since I was able to guess pretty quickly that “drills” and “exercises” were likely the common thread. Green was next, which I got because I tried to find other words that could mean “not quite”. Only “warm” felt off here, but “getting warmer” makes it work. This left a pretty obvious connection between “easy” and “flexible” and “game” and “open” when you start to think about, well, being up for anything.
And that left me with the purple words which, I’ll be honest, I really dislike here. Excellent and One make sense since they’re almost grades. A+. You’re number one. But Area and Athletic are just words that start with A. Even “area” makes sense, I suppose, if you’re doing some kind of math problem, but “athletic”? How about annoying!
How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.