Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 premonition (GUT FEELING, HUNCH, INTUITION, SIXTH SENSE)

These all refer to having some kind of foresight about an incident or something that’s happening or about to happen. It might be a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach when you sense that something’s wrong, for instance.

Connections – Green Group

🟩 cellphone modes (DO NOT DISTURB, RING, SILENT, VIBRATE)

These all refer to how your phone alerts you to phone calls or notifications.

You won’t be alerted to any of these if your phone is in DO NOT DISTURB mode. With RING enabled, your phone will play a chime for notifications and a ringtone for an incoming phone call.

SILENT is self-explanatory, but your phone’s display might light up when you get a notification or call. If you have VIBRATE enabled, your phone will vibrate when you receive a notification or call.

Connections – Blue Group

🟦 bad things to do in modern dating (BREADCRUMB, CATFISH, GHOST, LOVE BOMB)

BREADCRUMB is the only one of these I hadn’t heard of before. It’s akin to stringing someone along, or occasionally appearing to show romantic interest in another person to keep them engaged – even if you aren’t actually interested in having a relationship with them. Not cool!

CATFISHing is also not cool. It refers to deceiving a person by pretending to be someone else by, for instance, lying about one’s personal life and using phony photos (perhaps of someone else entirely). This often the foundation for a scam. A 2010 documentary called Catfish depicted a young man’s relationship with someone who was duping him on Facebook:

To GHOST someone means to ignore their messages and avoid contact without telling them why.

LOVE BOMBing is effectively the opposite. It means to deluge someone with messages and other demonstrations of affection, in large part to influence them. It’s a tactic that some scammers use to establish trust and a sense of connection with victims.

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 phrases whose second words include their first word (AIR CAIRO, HALLOWS, ARM WARMER, THE OTHERS)

This is a really fun group, I thought. The category explains this here as well, though.

Connections – Red Herrings

The first thing I noticed on today’s grid were four ghost movies: THE OTHERS, GHOST, SIXTH SENSE and (The) RING. Fun!

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I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes.