Looking for Thursday’s NYT Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there! It’s almost the weekend. We made it! Well, nearly.
I was absolutely delighted by recent news that all of the Scotland men’s national football team games in the lead up to next year’s World Cup will be broadcast on the BBC in the U.K. (the same goes for Wales and Northern Ireland games). For years, those matches had been on subscription services, which limited the audience. Now a public broadcaster will be showing them for free, save for the cost of the TV license fee that funds the BBC and is required to watch live TV in the U.K.
Watching Scotland games legally here in Canada has been a major hurdle for me in recent times. Similarly, a subscription-based streaming service holds the rights to show those in the country I live in. But the last time I signed up for the service, I still wasn’t able to access those games. It still appeared as though I was not a subscriber and the company didn’t respond to my support emails.
I paid for a month of access with nothing to show for it. I’m never giving DAZN another penny.
Instead, I’m not too proud to admit that I’ll be using a VPN to watch Scotland games on the BBC. It’s fine, I think I’m allowed. My parents back in Scotland pay the license fee. Can’t wait until the double-header agaist Greece next week.
Before we begin, I’ve set up a discussion group for NYT Connections and this column on Discord. We have a great little community over there and we chat about more than NYT games. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot.
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up since I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, March 14, are coming right up.
How To Play Connections
Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.
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 items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.
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 usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.
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. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.
If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the publication’s Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.
Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.
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…
- DIRT
- CANDY
- FINE
- SILK
- SHORT
- CHARGING CABLE
- ROCKY
- LEVY
- HIGH
- FILM SERIES
- MAGAZINE
- CHARGE
- EPIC
- CHAPSTICK
- ASSESS
- FEATURE
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — pay for your mistakes
- Green group — last-second purchases
- Blue group — there’s no real time limit for this artform
- Purple group — “country” and “rail” would slot in here
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today’s Connections groups are…
- Yellow group — impose, as a penalty
- Green group — checkout line impulse buys
- Blue group — movies of various lengths
- Purple group — ____ road
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 — impose, as a penalty (ASSESS, CHARGE, FINE, LEVY)
- Green group — checkout line impulse buys (CANDY, CHAPSTICK, CHARGING CABLE, MAGAZINE)
- Blue group — movies of various lengths (EPIC, FEATURE, FILM SERIES, SHORT)
- Purple group — ____ road (DIRT, HIGH, ROCKY, SILK)
I’m still alive, but barely as my streak extends to a 17th day. Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟪🟦🟨
🟨🟦🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟦🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
It turns out that playing Connections very late at night is a bad idea! I did not see anything that made sense at first. I thought that (Martin) SHORT and (Eugene/Daniel) LEVY might have been part of a group of Canadian comic actors. So I took a wild guess that those might go with CANDY and SILK, since those seemed the most likely to be surnames.
Not even close to a group there.
I don’t usually hit the shuffle button, but today I had no choice. I clicked it a few times until I saw LEVY and CHARGE next to each other and the yellows clicked. Well, sort of. I tried a guess of LEVY, CHARGE, FINE and SHORT. That put me one away from a group.
I then tried LEVY, CHARGE, FINE and ASSESS, which gave me the yellows. I’d never heard of ASSESS in that context, but I thought of it in terms of an assessment — like the Notice of Assessment Canadians receive after filing their taxes.
I again was stumped after that. With my eyes drooping and my desire to go to sleep rising, I grew impatient and went with an attempt of FILM SERIES, MAGAZINE, CHAPSTICK and CHARGING CABLE. My thinking was that they were longer words. That, thankfully, put me one away from a group. My weary eyes gazed upon CANDY and the greens finally clicked. Quite a nebulous group there but I suppose it works.
With only eight words left, the blues then became clear. I initially thought that FILM SERIES was a red herring for those, but nothing else was adding up.
That left the purples. I should have figured that group out.
DIRT road is self explanatory and HIGH road means to take a more moral path. ROCKY road is a type of ice cream and the SILK road is an ancient trade route between China and the West (also an online black market).
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 Saturday’s game if you need them.
P.S. Since we had HIGH road among the purples, I am compelled to recommend a song in which the person being addressed intends to literally take that path. It ties into today’s intro too.
Yes, I’m referring to “Loch Lomond” by Runrig. It’s one of my country’s many unofficial national anthems, a song that’s baked into the DNA of pretty much every person with Scottish blood. It’s arguably the most famous take on a Scottish folk song called “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.” I feel it deep in my soul every time I hear it:
It’s a whole thing at Scottish weddings:
And at Scotland football matches:
Beautiful sights and sounds. I’m suddenly quite homesick.
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
If you’re so inclined, please follow my blog for more coverage of NYT Connections and 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 Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.
