Looking for Friday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to the weekend!
I mentioned the other day that this is WrestleMania weekend, so I’m likely to be watching a ton of wrestling today and tomorrow. It should be fun! Oh, and I’ll definitely be watching the latest episode of The Last of Us tomorrow, of course. I wrote a bit about a key change that the season premiere made from The Last of Us Part 2 and why I think it was ultimately a good call, despite my initial reservations:
I’m not fretting at all about this next episode 🫠
Other than that, I dunno what I’m doing this weekend, as I’m flying solo. Maybe I should treat myself to brunch? Perhaps a casual gaming hangout on Discord (I do have a new microphone to test out after all)?
I could finally get the newsletter I’ve been planning up and running! I have a fun logo idea for it, I think. I need to find a designer to whip it up for me, because I would much rather pay a human than use generative AI.
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
Or maybe I should catch up on a couple of work assignments I’ve fallen behind on. Oops.
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 Saturday, April 19, 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 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…
- HOT
- DEVIL
- GOLDEN
- INTRO CLASS
- LAB
- BULLY
- SANDY
- ADDRESS
- DRY
- CANNABIS
- LECTURE
- JAMES BOND
- TALK
- CHOW
- VAST
- SPEECH
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — deliver information to an audience
- Green group — like arid and barren
- Blue group — our best pals, perhaps
- Purple group — like the next 321 games of Connections, maybe
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 — spoken presentation
- Green group — adjectives for a desert
- Blue group — dog breeds, informally
- Purple group — represented by three-digit numbers
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 — spoken presentation (ADDRESS, LECTURE, SPEECH, TALK)
- Green group — adjectives for a desert (DRY, HOT, SANDY, VAST)
- Blue group — dog breeds, informally (BULLY, CHOW, GOLDEN, LAB)
- Purple group — represented by three-digit numbers (CANNABIS, DEVIL, INTRO CLASS, JAMES BOND)
No perfect game this time, but my streak now sits at 53 wins. Here’s how I fared:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
My brain immediately went to things that are represented by numbers – 101 for INTRO CLASS and 007 for JAMES BOND. CANNABIS would be 420 and… I ran out of ideas at that point. Drat. Thankfully, seconds later, DEVIL caught my eye. That being is represented by 666.
I let out an audible “yesss,” when those turned out to be the purples. It’s been a long week, okay?
I thought LAB, LECTURE, SPEECH and TALK would give me perhaps the yellows, but I was one away there. Swapping out LAB for TALK got me there.
I spotted the greens pretty clearly at that point. I figured BULLY, LAB and GOLDEN referred to dog breeds, so I was confident about that connection. I hadn’t heard of CHOW in that context before, and nor had I heard of a Chow Chow until right now.
In any case, I got the blues then the greens for my latest victory. A BULLY is perhaps an American Bully or Bulldog, a LAB is a Labrador Retriever and a GOLDEN is a Golden Retriever.
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 Sunday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I have a couple of metal songs I’ve been keeping in my back pocket to drop into the recommendations. I know these won’t be for everyone, but I have to purge them from my human RAM by writing about them. The second one should be coming tomorrow, unless there’s something in Sunday’s game that inspires me to go in a different direction.
One of the biggest rock club hits of the century so far is “Halo” by Soil. It’s pretty catchy, but not for the faint of heart. I used to go to a rock club with my friends pretty much every week and we’d always hear this. It was a guaranteed floorfiller at such an establishment. Such a fun song to dance to if it aligns with your musical tastes:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
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.
