Looking for Saturday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
Stuck on today’s NYT Connections puzzle? Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered. Whether you need just a gentle nudge or the full set of answers, this guide will walk you through the hints, clues, and solutions for the Sunday, July 20th edition of The New York Times’s Connections. Read on for help grouping those tricky words and completing today’s challenge without spoilers — unless you want them!
New York Times Connections Guide Sunday July 20th
It’s Sunday, July 20th and we have a somewhat tricky Connections to solve this fine summer day. It also looks like it might rain, and while the rest of the country seems to be getting more than enough of that, here in the high mountain desert we could really use some. The North Grand Canyon Lodge burned down in a wildfire recently, and I’d really like to avoid any big ones closer to home. Feel free to send rain to Arizona!
In any case, as I said this is a trickier Connections than I’ve seen in a bit, though maybe it’s just me. Read on for some extra clues and the answers to today’s puzzle!
Check out today’s Wordle guide here. Get help with today’s Strands guide here.
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.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints For Sunday, July 20th?
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:
- BUZZ
- DRAG
- GROOVE
- TWIST
- PASS
- GIN
- DRAW
- LOAN
- BOP
- PUFF
- CROSS
- SHAKEN
- PULL
- BOUNCE
- DRY
- SWAY
Hints for the Connections groups today are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Dance to the beat!
- 🔵Blue group – James Bond would not like these stirred.
- 🟢Green group – Cigarettes, cigars, joints, pipes and what you do with them.
- 🟣Purple group – Add these to the beginning of a single word to make four larger words (that have no connection beyond this).
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Move to the music.
- 🔵Blue group – Martini specifications.
- 🟢Green group – Inhalation.
- 🟣Purple group – ____word.
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 – Bop, Bounce, Groove, Sway
- 🔵Blue group – Dry, Gin, Shaken, Twist
- 🟢Green group – Drag, Draw, Puff, Pull
- 🟣Purple group – Buzz, Cross, Loan, Pass
What made this Connections tricky were the purple words. Specifically, BUZZ and LOAN. BUZZ sounds like BOP and BOUNCE and GROOVE and SWAY. It sounds more like a dance word. It doesn’t sound like something you’d group with LOAN. The only reason I got purple before yellow today was because I’d basically already grouped the yellow words in my head and wanted to try the remaining four out to see if they stuck. I didn’t even realize they were all things like buzzword, crossword, loanword and password. Very tricky.
It might also be telling that I guessed the drinking and smoking words first, though my drinking and smoking days are well behind me. My crossword days are in full bloom. My dancing days? Well, I was never one to BOP or BOUNCE or GROOVE or SWAY but I do like playing guitar and piano!
Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.
