Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 long sandwich (GRINDER, HERO, HOAGIE, SUB)

These are all different names for what is (as best I can tell) effectively the same thing: a sandwich on a submarine bread roll. SUB is the most common nickname overall, while HERO and HOAGIE are more typically used in New York and Philadelphia/Pennsylvania, respectively.

It seems the outlier here is GRINDER, which is a common name for it in New England. In some areas, this is also the name for a SUB that has hot ingredients, like meatballs, sausage and so on.

Connections – Green Group

🟩 pretext (ARGUMENT, BASIS, CAUSE, GROUNDS)

These are basically synonyms for something you’d use as a justification for an action.

Connections – Blue Group

🟦 smartphone photo editing options (ADJUST, CROP, FILTERS, MARKUP)

On some photo editing apps, the ADJUST (or auto-adjust) button might tweak things like the focus, sharpness, saturation, temperature and lighting.

CROP allows you to cut the image down to a smaller section. For instance, you might want to crop out a garbage can or someone who’s photobombing your snap.

FILTERS offer a wide variety of options for your photos. They can tweak things like the image temperature or lighting, or add animated or interactive elements to the photo.

MARKUP tools allow you to illustrate an image by, for instance, circling an important piece of information, adding an arrow to point to something or overlaying text.

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 jelly _____ (BEAN, BELLY, DONUT, ROLL)

A jelly BEAN is a small, bean-shaped candy. Jelly BELLY is a company that makes a brand of jelly beans.

A JELLY donut is another name for a jam-filled donut. Jelly ROLL is a Grammy-winning rapper and singer.

Connections – Red Herrings

There was a coffee-related bunch of words: FILTERS, GROUNDS, GRINDER and BEAN.

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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.