NYT Connections – How To Play

Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT’s website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.

Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don’t know how they hit together or what the category for each group is: that’s what you have to figure out.

There’s only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it’s game over.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by blue, green and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs – part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.

As with Wordle and similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.

Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow – correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.

NYT Connections Hints – Today’s Word List

Scroll slowly! I’ll first give you a list of today’s words, then a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll tell you the category names, followed by the full answers.

Today’s 16 words are...

• POUR
• WAX
• ALE
• HIVE
• CREST
• HONEY
• MIX
• COMB
• BUFF
• WIGHT
• WATTLE
• CITRINE
• SHINE
• BEAK
• AMBER
• POLISH

NYT Connections Hints

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — cause for self-reflection
• 🟩 Green group — it's unclear whether these are winners, but you can see right through them
• 🟦 Blue group — where one might sometimes find the bill
• 🟪 Purple group — something's not quite adding up

NYT Connections Hints – One Answer Per Group

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Let’s take a look at one answer for each group.

Here we go…

• 🟨 Yellow group — BUFF
• 🟩 Green group — CITRINE
• 🟦 Blue group —CREST
• 🟪 Purple group — WIGHT

NYT Connections Hints – Groups/Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — make glossy
• 🟩 Green group — translucent golden things
• 🟦 Blue group — features of a bird’s head
• 🟪 Purple group — numbers with first letter changed

NYT Connections Answers

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your last chance to look away.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — make glossy (BUFF, POLISH, SHINE, WAX)
• 🟩 Green group — translucent golden things (ALE, AMBER, CITRINE, HONEY)
• 🟦 Blue group — features of a bird's head (BEAK, COMB, CREST, WATTLE)
• 🟪 Purple group — numbers with first letter changed (HIVE, MIX, POUR, WIGHT)

I suspected that WAX, HIVE, HONEY and COMB made for a red herring, because one of them would just be "honeycomb" if there was indeed a group of bee-related words. So I left those alone.

Instead, I realized that WAX went with the rest of the yellows, so I took care of those. I thought the greens would just be beer-related words but I'll take it.

I didn’t know what a WATTLE was (the fold of skin that hangs from the throats of some birds, such as a turkey) but I am aware that BEAK, COMB and CREST are all parts of a bird. WATTLE somehow made more sense with those than any of the other remaining words, somehow.

That left the purples to wrap things up – they refer to five, six, four and eight. A slightly annoying wordplay group, but far from the most egregious one we've seen.

A second regular rainbow in a row means my streak is now up to 426 wins on the bounce.

How did you get on today? Here's my grid:

🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

I kind of explained all the things worth explaining already, huh? So no separate Answers Explained column from me this time.

That brings my current stint of NYT Connections clues and answers coverage here to an end. I’ll be back here for more on Monday. But if you don’t feel like waiting until then for the mix of fun hints, intros and recommendations I offer up every single day, you can read my weekend editions of this column over at my newsletter, Pastimes.

P.S. Here’s another Ninajirachi song I enjoyed after I listened to her album, I Love My Computer. "It’s You," a collaboration with Daine, is another solid of glitch-pop EDM:

If you dig that, you might like the album:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!

Please follow my blog for more NYT Connections hints and help with other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too.