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.

Today’s NYT Connections 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...

• THE OTHERS
• SILENT
• GHOST
• ALL HALLOWS
• SIXTH SENSE
• BREADCRUMB
• RING
• INTUITION
• ARM WARMER
• GUT FEELING
• CATFISH
• DO NOT DISTURB
• VIBRATE
• LOVE BOMB
• AIR CAIRO
• HUNCH

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — foresight
• 🟩 Green group — handset settings
• 🟦 Blue group — your future with someone may Hinge on not doing these
• 🟪 Purple group — [YouTube link]

NYT Connections – 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 — INTUITION
• 🟩 Green group — RING
• 🟦 Blue group — BREADCRUMB
• 🟪 Purple group — THE OTHERS

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — premonition
• 🟩 Green group — cellphone modes
• 🟦 Blue group — bad things to do in modern dating
• 🟪 Purple group — phrases whose second words include their first word

Today’s 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...

I had to smile when I saw some ghost movies on the list: THE OTHERS, GHOST, SIXTH SENSE and The RING. However, I very quickly decided against guessing a group of those given the presence (pun intended) of INTUITION, GUT FEELING and HUNCH. I correctly sensed that SIXTH SENSE should go with those and thus I had the yellows.

The phone sound settings were next for the greens. I didn't exactly know what BREADCRUMB meant in this context, but it made the most sense to go with GHOST, CATFISH and LOVE BOMB as a group of terms for dating app interactions (or non-interactions).

That left the purples for the win. I didn’t figure out the category here, but I’ll happily take that group by default. Fun category, in the end. They did an Inception with those words. Brrrrm.

I enjoyed this one. That was my 438th win in a row.

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

🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Want to know more about how everything fits together? Let’s explore today’s game in more depth in my NYT Connections Answers Explained column. You can check that out by visiting my author page.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog tomorrow for hints and the solution for Friday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I recently recommended a lesser-known Queens of the Stone Age song, and I’m gonna do the same again today. I listened to Lullabies to Paralyze, the album on which this song appears, on loop while playing whatever golf video game EA put out with Tiger Woods on the cover that year. So every time I listen to songs like "Everybody Knows That You're Insane," it reminds me of the countless hours I spent in my bedroom playing that game on my PlayStation 2.

Such a great album, and this is such a killer song. I love that menacing intro and first verse with the lap steel and crunchy distorted guitar chords in the distance, before the first chorus punches you in the face. The second verse switches things up with call-and-response riffs that dance from ear to ear. The breakdown with a very Queens-y solo and bridge lead up to a cathartic final chorus. I can't really fault anything about this song:

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.