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 3

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:

• porch
• hippie
• industrial
• bunny ears
• shed
• french
• peace
• free love
• garage
• acid
• fingers crossed
• green
• house
• sexual
• air quotes
• commune

An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Think of residences
• 🔵Blue group – Fight the power
• 🟢Green group – Fight the power during the Vietnam War
• 🟣Purple group – Use two of the digits on your hand

One Word for Each Connections Group:

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Garage
• 🔵Blue group – Industrial
• 🟢Green group – Commune
• 🟣Purple group – Bunny Ears

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Home Structures
• 🔵Blue group – Famous Revolutions In History
• 🟢Green group – Associated with 1960s Counterculture
• 🟣Purple group – Gestures made with the index and middle fingers

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 – garage, house, porch, shed
• 🔵Blue group – French, Green, Industrial, Sexual
• 🟢Green group – acid, commune, free love, hippie
• 🟣Purple group – air quotes, bunny ears, fingers crossed, peace

Here’s the finished grid:

Today’s Connections earned a 2/5 difficulty score on the Connections Bot, and that tracks with my experience. I didn’t miss a guess today, which is rare. I also solved this totally out of order, getting the Purple group second. Then again, I’d say this was one of the most obvious Purple Groups I’ve seen so . . . .

The red herring today was all the peace and love stuff. You have the PEACE symbol, the SEXUAL revolution, ACID and HIPPIEs and FREE LOVE. Still, seeing FRENCH in there made me instantly think of revolutions, and all those two-finger gestures were pretty obvious. All told, not as challenging a Connections as I’d have liked this Sunday, but them’s the breaks.

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!