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...

• WOOFER
• RUFFIAN
• INHALE
• GROOT
• EMBARK
• MAGNET
• SNARF
• CONE
• ROGUE
• CRUSH
• CABINET
• STRUNK
• NUDIBRANCH
• MISCREANT
• GUZZLE
• SCOUNDREL

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — they used to be up to no good
• 🟩 Green group — wolf down
• 🟦 Blue group — they convert signals into waves
• 🟪 Purple group — folks who like spoilers might immediately leaf through to the end of a story

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 — ROGUE
• 🟩 Green group — INHALE
• 🟦 Blue group — CONE
• 🟪 Purple group — STRUNK

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — old-timey trouble makers
• 🟩 Green group — consume with gusto
• 🟦 Blue group — parts of a speaker
• 🟪 Purple group — ending in parts of a tree

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...

I did wonder for a sec if we might have a group of Marvel characters with GROOT and ROGUE, but that notion was dispelled as soon as I got down to NUDIBRANCH, which is one of the most purple-coded words I’ve ever seen in this game. GROOT was a clear match for that, along with EMBARK and STRUNK. (These refer to branch, root, bark and trunk.)

WOOFER clued me into the speaker components for the blues. I was then 50-50 on what would be the yellows and greens, but managed to get the latter first for my first reverse rainbow in ages. That takes my current streak up to 484.

How did you get on this time? Here's my grid:

🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨

I don’t have much scope for an Answers Explained column today as the category titles pretty much take care of things at a high level. I did see two sort of red herrings, though.

ROGUE, GROOT and CRUSH are Marvel characters. MAGNET is almost Magneto. There’s also WOOFER and RUFFIAN, which start with sounds a dog makes.

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 tomorrow’s game if you need them.

P.S. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this until it popped up in my YouTube recommendations recently. A few months back, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Hayley Williams appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to perform a duet of Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s "Ffunny Ffrends."

It’s real good. Of course it would be with those two. The biggest surprise for me was Williams busting out a solo on the theremin. That ruled. I love Tweedy’s half-moon guitar too:

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.