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, June 14

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:

• mother
• gyroscope
• cream pie
• milliampere
• caterpillar
• globe
• massachusetts
• tea party
• roulette wheel
• rabbit hole
• pocket watch
• master of arts
• rubber chicken
• grindstone
• banana peel
• seltzer bottle

Here’s an Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

• 🟡Yellow group – Bugs Bunny, for example
• 🔵Blue group – Lewis Carroll
• 🟢Green group – You can move these in a very specific way
• 🟣Purple group – Shorten these to a two letter abbreviation

One Word for Each Connections Group:

• 🟡Yellow group – Rubber Chicken
• 🔵Blue group – Caterpillar
• 🟢Green group – Gyroscope
• 🟣Purple group – Mother

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Classic slapstick props
• 🔵Blue group – Featured in ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’
• 🟢Green group – Things that spin
• 🟣Purple group – What ‘MA’ 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. The Connections answers are:

• 🟡Yellow group – Banana Peel, Cream Pie, Rubber Chicken, Seltzer Bottle
• 🔵Blue group – Caterpillar, Pocket Watch, Rabbit Hole, Tea Party
• 🟢Green group – Globe, Grindstone, Gyroscope, Roulette Wheel
• 🟣Purple group – Massachusetts, Master of Arts, Milliampere, Mother

Here’s the finished grid:

Today’s NYT Connections was a 2/5 on the Connections Bot difficulty scale. I actually thought it was going to be more difficult than it was, probably because there were so many double words and longer, difficult words like MILLIAMPERE and GYROSCOPE (which also felt like they could group together). There were also clearly some red herrings, like MOTHER and the Alice in Wonderland terms, which are Mother Goose adjacent.

Speaking of Alice, I got the Blue words first, though I had actually started to group up the Yellow words before I noticed the Wonderland connection. I had BANANA PEEL, CREAM PIE and RUBBER CHICKEN but wasn’t sure on the fourth, so I swerved to the Blue group and pieced those together, and then realized the Green words were all things that spin.

I guessed the four Purple words not because the MA connection, but because they all started with the letter M. Funnily enough, that was a good enough connection to be correct!

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!