Looking for Sunday’s NYT Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! I hope you had an excellent weekend and you’re raring to go for the week ahead.
Let’s keep up our long-standing tradition (okay, this is the third week I’ve done it) of starting a Monday edition of the column with an upbeat song you can dance along to. It might help shake the cobwebs off.
Since I went with a brass band cover of a song last time out, I’ll go with this original from Lil Rascals Brass Band. I’ve loved this ever since I heard it on an episode of Treme I watched about a decade ago. I’ve never been to New Orleans, but every time I listen to this song it makes me want to hop on a plane and visit Bourbon Street as soon as possible. It’s infectious as heck:
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 Monday, March 10, 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…
- MONA LISA
- STATUE OF LIBERTY
- BOWLING
- SPHYNX
- VENUS DE MILO
- JOKER
- RUSSIAN BLUE
- RUG
- WHITE RUSSIAN
- LIBERTY BELL
- COMEDY MASK
- TURKISH ANGORA
- RAGAMUFFIN
- CHESHIRE CAT
- BATHROBE
- TOWER OF PISA
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — you’re just a whisker away from figuring this out
- Green group — no frowns allowed
- Blue group — they don’t look like they used to
- Purple group — these things abide. If you disagree, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man
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 — cat breeds
- Green group — famous smiles
- Blue group — attractions iconically different from their original forms
- Purple group — Associated with “The Dude” Lebowski
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 — cat breeds (RAGAMUFFIN, RUSSIAN BLUE, SPHYNX, TURKISH ANGORA)
- Green group — famous smiles (CHESHIRE CAT, COMEDY MASK, JOKER, MONA LISA)
- Blue group — attractions iconically different from their original forms (LIBERTY BELL, STATUE OF LIBERTY, TOWER OF PISA, VENUS DE MILO)
- Purple group — Associated with “The Dude” Lebowski (BATHROBE, BOWLING, RUG, WHITE RUSSIAN)
I’m still striving for my first perfect game in a while, but my overall streak is now up to 13 wins. Here’s how I fared:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟦🟨🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟦🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
Ooh, this was a fun one! I had quite a few thoughts off the bat. I vaguely remembered that RUSSIAN BLUE and TURKISH ANGORA are breeds of cat (as are CHESHIRE CAT, SPHYNX and RAGAMUFFIN). JOKER, COMEDY MASK and CHESHIRE CAT all have famous smiles.
MONA LISA, STATUE OF LIBERTY, VENUS DE MILO and SPHYNX are all famous works of art representing female figures. And RUG, BOWLING, WHITE RUSSIAN and BATHROBE all seemed to be references to The Big Lebowski. I thought those might be the purples so I went with a guess of those first and I was right.
(Side note: I went to a very fun live reading of The Big Lebowski script some years ago, which just reaffirmed to me that Mae Whitman is the absolute best.)
I went with my idea of depictions of female figures in art next, but I could not have been more wrong. Not even one away on that guess. So SPHYNX seemed to be aligned with the cat breeds. I squared away the yellows since CHESHIRE CAT was the most likely to belong elsewhere.
It was then that I realized that, of course, the MONA LISA is famed for its cheeky lil’ smirk. But, like a dolt, I accidentally included LIBERTY BELL with my next guess instead of CHESHIRE CAT. Nonetheless, that let me put away the greens.
In case you’re wondering, this is what a COMEDY MASK looks like (alongside its tragedy sibling):
I wasn’t sure of the exact connection for the blues before submitting them for the win, but it made sense in hindsight. The TOWER OF PISA started leaning during its construction because its foundation was unstable. The LIBERTY BELL famously cracked after its arrival in Philadelphia, and at some point in its history the VENUS DE MILO’s arms broke off. As for the STATUE OF LIBERTY, that was originally reddish-brown but it turned green due to oxidization.
I knew all of that too! Having a ton of previously useless knowledge lodged in my brain is so helpful for this game. Well, sometimes anyway.
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 Tuesday’s game if you need them.
P.S. A song I haven’t thought about in a while recently found its way back to my ears. So, I thought I’d share it with you lot.
“Dreaming of You” by The Coral is under two and a half minutes long, and not a single second is wasted. It’s such a lovely little earworm:
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! Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.
