Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
Looking for Thursday’s Connections hints and answers? You can find them here:
Happy Friday, gang! The weekend is right around the corner. Heck, it’ll be the second day of an extra-long weekend for folks in the U.S. who opted to take the day off after July 4. That’s the way to do it.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers are coming right up.
How To Play Connections
In Connections, you’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like horror movie franchises, a type of verb or rappers.
There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is typically the hardest one to deduce. The purple group often involves wordplay, so bear that in mind.
Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.
If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.
Today’s 16 words are…
- YEN
- BOND
- MAD
- POWER
- EURO
- O
- Q
- FORTUNE
- LONG
- M
- K
- PINE
- BUBBLEGUM
- NATURE
- DESIRE
- MONEYPENNY
And the hints for today’s groups are:
- Yellow group — want
- Green group — periodicals
- Blue group — fictional employees of MI6
- Purple group — sub-genres
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today’s groups are…
- Yellow group — yearn
- Green group — magazines
- Blue group — characters in Bond movies
- Purple group — words that precede “pop” in music genres
What Are Today’s 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 final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
- Yellow group — yearn (DESIRE, LONG, PINE, YEN)
- Green group — magazines (FORTUNE, MAD, NATURE, O)
- Blue group — characters in Bond movies (BOND, M, MONEYPENNY, Q)
- Purple group — words that precede “pop” in music genres (BUBBLEGUM, EURO, K, POWER)
Back-to-back perfect games means I’m now up to four straight wins.
I found this to be a very fun game. Obviously, the single letters in the middle caught my eye right away, while there were some clear red herrings (such as the combo of YEN and EURO).
MONEYPENNY was a clear entry point into the blues, as was BUBBLEGUM for the purple group. The other two groups demanded a little more thought until I realized the connection between FORTUNE and NATURE. That left me with the yellows for the win, but I’d never actually heard of YEN in that context.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Saturday’s game if you need them.
P.S. Power pop is such a great, expansive genre though I mainly think of it as upbeat rock music. Weezer are among the very best proponents and while my favorite song of theirs will forever be “Say It Ain’t So,” I can’t not go with this one: