Looking for Friday’s Connections hints and answers? You can find them here:
Welcome to the weekend! I hope you’ve got a fun one lined up. I’m a little under the weather, so I’m prescribing myself a healthy diet of rest, sports on TV and video games (and maybe a comfort movie or two.)
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers are coming right up.
How To Play Connections
In Connections, 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 horror movie franchises, a type of verb or rappers.
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 typically the hardest one to deduce. The purple group often involves wordplay, so bear that in mind.
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.
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:
- GOATEE
- HAMMER
- HURDLE
- HITCH
- HOGWASH
- PITCHFORK
- TAIL
- BEND
- BUNK
- SHEEPSHANK
- HORNS
- HORSEFEATHERS
- POLE
- CROCK
- BOWLINE
- BATON
And the hints for today’s groups are:
- Yellow group — nonsense
- Green group — spotted at the Olympics
- Blue group — elements of a hellish Halloween outfit
- Purple group — all tied up
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today’s groups are…
- Yellow group — balderdash
- Green group — track and field equipment
- Blue group — parts of a Devil costume
- Purple group — types of knots
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 — balderdash (BUNK, CROCK, HOGWASH, HORSEFEATHERS)
- Green group — track and field equipment (BATON, HAMMER, HURDLE, POLE)
- Blue group — parts of a Devil costume (GOATEE, HORNS, PITCHFORK, TAIL)
- Purple group — types of knots (BEND, BOWLINE, HITCH, SHEEPSHANK)
I’m back to winning days after losing my nine-day streak yesterday and I was delighted to do so with a winning game.
I got the yellows first. I wasn’t sure about the fourth word since I’d never heard of HORSEFEATHERS but it kind of sort of sounded like a word that meant nonsense. The gamble paid off.
The blues were up next as the grid handily pushed those close together for me. The same held true for the purples, which I actually thought referred to bends in a river (I’d never heard of SHEEPSHANK either). Nevertheless, that left the greens for victory.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Sunday’s game if you need them.
P.S. Today is the fourth edition of a mini column I’m currently calling British bands Kris listened to a lot while growing up — the name’s a work in progress.
To this day, I still love Feeder. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them live and I doubt that they’ll be playing North America again, but I’m holding out hope that they will. I had to think for a little while about which song to highlight since Feeder have a ton of great singles, and “Insomnia” is probably my favorite, but let’s go with “Just A Day.”
Despite the melancholy lyrics, it has such an upbeat tone that fits my current mood. The video — which shows fans singing, dancing, miming and emoting along to the song — never fails to put a smile on my face:
