Looking for Sunday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! Welcome to the start of a new week.
I hope those of you in the U.S. who have a long weekend are making the most of it. After all, there’s absolutely nothing of significance taking place in the world today. Nothing at all.
TikTok went away, and then it came back, so if you want to spend the entire day scrolling through videos, that’s fine by me. You have my permission.
Before we get going, I’ve started a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat about each game (and other topics) with me and other folks. I’m always interested to find out how other people approach the game, so join us! It’s fun.
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, January 20, 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…
- COOKIE
- BEAR
- SPINACH
- SHOULDER
- CROOK
- ANCHOR
- ELBOW
- CHEAT
- PIPE
- HANDLE
- BEND
- FOREARM
- FITTED
- ANGLE
- ASSUME
- BALANCE
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — step up
- Green group — arguably the most dangerous parts of an F1 circuit
- Blue group — because of what he eats, he’s “strong to the finich”
- Purple group — like an Excel file
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 — take on, as a responsibility
- Green group — corners
- Blue group — associated with Popeye
- Purple group — ____ sheet
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 — take on, as a responsibility (ASSUME, BEAR, HANDLE, SHOULDER)
- Green group — corners (ANGLE, BEND, CROOK, ELBOW)
- Blue group — associated with Popeye (ANCHOR, FOREARM, PIPE, SPINACH)
- Purple group — ____ sheet (BALANCE, CHEAT, COOKIE, FITTED)
I’ve had five straight perfect games! My overall win streak is up to eight. Here’s how I fared:
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
I got the blues pretty much immediately. SPINACH was a dead giveaway. Popeye famously has ANCHOR tattoos on his giant FOREARMs and he uses a PIPE.
With FOREARM out of the way as part of a red herring of arm-related things, it was easy to spot the yellows. From there, COOKIE and FITTED made the purples apparent enough to me. That left the greens (for which I did figure out the connection) for a swift victory.
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. I’ve been doing these daily recommendations for I think over a year at this point and I somehow can’t believe I haven’t brought up OK Go yet. I love OK Go. Such a fun band.
Their first album in over a decade is coming soon, and they just released their first single from it last week. OK Go are famed for their wildly creative music videos, and the one for “A Stone Only Rolls Downhill” is no exception. They used videos shot on 64 iPhones to create a remarkable mosaic:
It’s worth checking out the behind-the-scenes clip to get a sense of how this ridiculous thing came together:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of 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.
