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...

• BANJO
• OTHELLO
• AYE
• NUTMEG
• HAMLET
• PIER
• OPERATION
• MACBETH
• LEAR
• TROUBLE
• MONOGAMY
• COMMUNE
• TOWNSHIP
• BATTLESHIP
• VILLAGE
• STAIR

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — where people come together, but not too many
• 🟩 Green group — go take a risk if you want to have a clue in life
• 🟦 Blue group — sight and sound are helpful factors in being perceptive
• 🟪 Purple group — growing up is a March of ups and downs to the very end

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 — VILLAGE
• 🟩 Green group — OPERATION
• 🟦 Blue group — LEAR
• 🟪 Purple group — MONOGAMY

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — small community
• 🟩 Green group — classic board games
• 🟦 Blue group — homophones of ways of looking
• 🟪 Purple group — ending in the Little Women March sisters

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 figured that it was a 50-50 shot as to whether there was a group of Shakespeare protagonists or board games. My gut told me to go with the latter and I got the greens.

Clean up was pretty quick from there. I figured that MACBETH probably had something to do with the name Beth, and as soon as my eyes darted over to BANJO, I figured out the purple category.

HAMLET then had to be a reference to a settlement and probably a yellow. Once I realized what those were, though, I had to submit the blues first. Reading those out loud made the category clear. I slid those and the yellows through for win number 451 on the trot.

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 right here:

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 Thursday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I guess we're going with a bunch of Europop/Eurodance songs this week.
John Paul Larkin (aka Scatman John) may have been American, but his best-known song, "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)" was 100% a Eurodance classic. If you hit the play button here, good luck getting this out of your head for the rest of the week:

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. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.