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 24

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:

• herb
• coop
• strike
• stable
• itsy
• mask
• rally
• staff
• hiss
• shed
• rattle
• drum
• march
• mya
• pen
• picket

Here’s an Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

• 🟡Yellow group – Animal residences.
• 🔵Blue group – Props or costumes for a type of performance.
• 🟢Green group – When you go up against The Man.
• 🟣Purple group – Remove one letter from each word to create four new words.

One Word for Each Connections Group:

• 🟡Yellow group – Pen
• 🔵Blue group – Rattle
• 🟢Green group – Strike
• 🟣Purple group – Mya

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Farm fixtures
• 🔵Blue group – Objects used in ritual performances
• 🟢Green group – Labor protest actions
• 🟣Purple group – Possessive adjectives plus a letter

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. The Connections answers are:

• 🟡Yellow group – coop, pen, shed, stable
• 🔵Blue group – drum, mask, rattle, staff
• 🟢Green group – march, picket, rally, strike
• 🟣Purple group – herb, hiss, itsy, mya

Here’s the finished grid:

Not the hardest NYT Connections puzzle we’ve encountered, rating just a 2/5 on the Connections Bot scale. I admit, I was a bit confused when I was down to just two categories, and hadn’t figured out the connection for the Purple words when I locked those in last.

The Green and Yellow groups were fairly straightforward, however. MARCH, PICKET, RALLY and STRIKE were very obviously all types of protests. I’m not sure what the red herrings were today. Perhaps STRIKE could fit in with DRUM and RATTLE, and maybe even HISS but it’s not a particularly obvious misdirect.

The Blue group was particularly evocative today, and it was the image of a figure in a MASK with a STAFF beating a DRUM or shaking a RATTLE that made me put those words together. A very primal image.

How’d 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!