Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 found in a casino (CARDS, CHIPS, DICE, SLOT MACHINE)

Annotated versions of the grid seems like the best way to handle this one in case anyone’s not sure what each illustration represents.

DICE are used in craps, while CARDS are essential in poker and blackjack. A SLOT MACHINE is a gambling game of chance in which players typically try to line up matching symbols to win money. Many have a physical lever that the players pull to rotate drums on which the symbols are printed:

CHIPS are small discs that serve as currency in casinos:

Connections – Green Group

🟩 ways to fasten things (BUCKLE, BUTTON, LACES, ZIPPER)

Aside from the BUTTON, it took me a minute to figure out these illustrations, but they make sense.

Connections – Blue Group

🟦 seen in a bowling alley (BOWLING BALL, BOWLING PINS, LANE, SCORECARD)

The BOWLING BALL illustration is of a circle with three smaller circles depicting the holes you’d place your fingers into before rolling a ball. The BOWLING PINS are shown from above in their usual triangular arrangement with one at the front, two in the second row, three in the third and four in the back row.

The bowling SCORECARD tracks a player’s frame-by-frame performance and indicates if they scored a strike or spare, which increases their score with bonus pins from subsequent balls:

In the illustration, the bowling LANE is depicted from above, with a gutter on either side:

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 flag designs (CIRCLE, HORIZONTAL BISECTION, HORIZONTAL TRISECTION, VERTICAL TRISECTION)

These all refer to designs of national flags. You’d see a red CIRCLE on a white background in the flag of Japan:

Poland is among the countries that have a flag with a HORIZONTAL BISECTION design:

A German flag is an example of one with a HORIZONTAL TRISECTION:

As for a VERTICAL TRISECTION, that’s the format of the Italian flag:

Connections – Red Herrings

I guess the CIRCLE could be mistaken for a roulette ball to be a red herring with the casino group. I didn’t clock any others, though. Today was tricky enough without any red herrings.

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I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes.