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.

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.

NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, May 10

Below, we’ll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.

Here are today’s Connections words:

• pour
• leap
• season
• play
• coil
• sure
• garnish
• skip
• bound
• shuffle
• muddle
• certain
• stir
• fountain
• repeat
• fated

An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

Here’s an extra hint to help you solve each Connections group today:

• 🟡Yellow group – press to make sounds
• 🔵Blue group – minty cocktail
• 🟢Green group – similar to “doomed” or “foretold”
• 🟣Purple group – one word can apply to all four of these disparate terms

One Word for Each Connections Group:

Here’s one word from each group to help get you started:

• 🟡Yellow group – play
• 🔵Blue group – garnish
• 🟢Green group – fated
• 🟣Purple group – leap

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:

• 🟡Yellow group – Verbs in making a mojito.
• 🔵Blue group – Music player buttons.
• 🟢Green group – Destined.
• 🟣Purple group – What “spring” might refer to.

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 – play, repeat, shuffle, skip
• 🔵Blue group – garnish, muddle, pour, stir
• 🟢Green group – bound, certain, fated, sure
• 🟣Purple group – coil, fountain, leap, season

Here’s the finished grid:

This was a tricky one, though I suspect that is likely as much my fault as it is the puzzle’s. I’ve had rather lousy sleep the last few days and I’m not firing on all cylinders, as it were. I definitely got sidetracked on today’s Connections.

First I thought we were looking for words that had to do with skipping or moving, ike LEAP, BOUND and SHUFFLE and SKIP, though SHUFFLE didn’t really work here. Then I spotted COIL and started thinking:

"To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause, there’s the respect, That makes calamity of so long life.”

(See, even William Shakespeare used em dashes.)

In any case, I got there eventually, with a couple misfires, and a bit out of order other than the Purple, which I think messed me up due to FOUNTAIN. A spring is not the same thing as a fountain! Spring and leap are synonymous basically, and a spring is coiled and spring is a season, but a fountain? Hmmm.

How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Find more guides to Wordle, Pips and Strands on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Let me know if you have any fun puzzle games in your rotation that I should try on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Have a great Sunday!