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...

• WEEKEND
• RANDO
• PAULO
• FRANCI
• JOHNS
• MONICA
• WORK
• WONK
• TOME
• SALVADOR
• DIVISION
• VOLUME
• DISTANCE
• OPUS
• REALM
• PETERSBURG

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — like War and Peace and The Lord of the Rings
• 🟩 Green group — holy habitation
• 🟦 Blue group — board, sword and shot would fit in here
• 🟪 Purple group — like a frugal person, you can really stretch a dollar here

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 — VOLUME
• 🟩 Green group — MONICA
• 🟦 Blue group — JOHNS
• 🟪 Purple group — REALM

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — substantial book
• 🟩 Green group — "saint" cities
• 🟦 Blue group — "long" things
• 🟪 Purple group — currencies plus a letter

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...

Lots of places named after saints on the grid today with PAULO (São Paulo), JOHNS, (Santa) MONICA, (San) SALVADOR and PETERSBURG in the mix. However, I took care of the yellows first since those seemed clear enough.

RANDO made me think of "rand" as FRANCI did for "franc," so that lead me into the purples.

"Long" WEEKEND and DISTANCE helped me figure out the blues, which took JOHNS out of the equation for the "saint" cities and the greens.

I'm very happy to extend my streak to 436 wins in a row! How did you get on today? Here's my grid:

🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Want to know more about how everything fits together? Let’s explore today’s game in more depth in my NYT Connections Answers Explained column. You can check that out by visiting my author page.

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 Wednesday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I don’t listen to a ton of Muse these days. I’m not totally sure why, to be honest. I’ve always liked them. I loved the early stuff and was there the first time they ever played "Knights of Cydonia" live.

I saw some positive buzz around new song “Cryogen”, so I checked it out. I was delighted to hear an old-school Muse song – hooky, operatic, inventive and technically impressive:

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.