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...

• BEAN
• CROP
• GRINDER
• DONUT
• GROUNDS
• ADJUST
• ROLL
• FILTERS
• SUB
• CAUSE
• BELLY
• BASIS
• HERO
• ARGUMENT
• MARKUP
• HOAGIE

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — appropriately enough, you might feel stuffed after one of these
• 🟩 Green group — starting point
• 🟦 Blue group — touch-up tools
• 🟪 Purple group — like fungus, plant and baby

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 — HERO
• 🟩 Green group — CAUSE
• 🟦 Blue group — MARKUP
• 🟪 Purple group — BELLY

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — long sandwich
• 🟩 Green group — pretext
• 🟦 Blue group — smartphone photo editing options
• 🟪 Purple group — jelly _____

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...

HOAGIE, SUB and HERO led me to believe that there'd be a group of sandwich-related words. I figured that ROLL would be the fourth word. That guess put me one away from a group. I thought it best to leave those alone for a bit.

ARGUMENT and BASIS were my lead-ins to the greens. That eliminated FILTERS and GROUNDS from contention from a group of coffee-related words along with GRINDER and BEAN. Good thing, too, because that would have been my next idea.

DONUT and BELLY landed close to each other, which made me think of "jelly," so I was able to secure the purples. CROP and ADJUST then were side-by-side, so I could get the blues.

I guess the yellows were defaults for me today? I had the right idea, but I have never, not once, heard of a GRINDER sandwich. (Or maybe I did and totally forgot about it.)

In any case, my streak is up to 437 wins 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 Thursday’s game if you need them.

P.S. Carly Rae Jepsen can do no wrong. She’s a Canadian icon. So I was delighted to see this song pop up in my YouTube recommendations recently. “Disco Darling” seems to be an older track that was unreleased until a few weeks ago. It’s a real solid piece of mid-tempo pop:

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.