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, April 19

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:

• kid
• river
• bust
• sassy
• mint
• flop
• wise
• hips
• dud
• turn
• cap
• fresh
• waist
• hole
• arch
• length

An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Attitude, lip.
• 🔵Blue group – Poker terms
• 🟢Green group – Seamstress terms
• 🟣Purple group – Candy words

One Word for Each Connections Group:

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Sassy
• 🔵Blue group – Flop
• 🟢Green group – Waist
• 🟣Purple group – Dud

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Cheeky
• 🔵Blue group – Cards in Texas Hole’em
• 🟢Green group – Dress measurements
• 🟣Purple group – Last words of candy brands in the singular

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 – arch, fresh, sassy, wise
• 🔵Blue group – flop, hole, river, turn
• 🟢Green group – bust, hips, length, waist
• 🟣Purple group – cap, dud, kid, mint

Here’s the finished grid:

Another tricky Connections, though far from the hardest 5/5 difficulty puzzles I’ve played. I think this one depends a lot on whether or not you play Texas Hole’em. I was actually just working on a game – I design tabletop RPGs as a hobby – that incorporates a modified version of Texas Hold’em into the gameplay, and so these words stood out like brigh beacons, making the Blue Group an obvious choice. Green was pretty easy also, though I’m no tailor.

Yellow actually stumped me and I missed two times guessing. I had fresh, sassy and wise but I tried both kid and mint to no avail. I guess I’m just not familar with the term “arch” in this context. That left purple, which was easy since that was the only group left. I was pretty sure it had to do with candy by this point, but not the specific “last words of candy brands in the singular” category.

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!