Looking for Saturday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there, Connectors! I hope you’re having a great weekend.
I wrote elsewhere this past week about a major new mode in Overwatch 2, a game I play nearly every day. I had some apprehension before my hands-on time with the mode, because it didn’t seem like it would necessarily jive with how I prefer to play games.
One of the things that drew me to Overwatch in the first place is that each character had a defined weapon and set of abilities. More recently, though, the developers have been introducing layers of gameplay customization – ways to change up what you can actually do in the game.
That’s largely what this new mode, called Stadium, is about. You stick with one character for the entire match and upgrade their stats and abilities between rounds. That’s not something I particularly care to spend my time doing in games, but I’ve stuck with it here, because Stadium is really fun.
Still, I’ve been thinking more about the types of games I’m playing and how I’m spending my time with them. I have access to literally thousands of games, and yet there’s one I keep returning to over and over. That’s despite wanting to try as many different games as I can – especially the big hitters – so I have a greater understanding of what’s going on in the industry to help me do my job more effectively.
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
How I spend my time – how we spend our time – is the foundational idea behind a newsletter I’m starting. I’ll still write about whatever I feel like, but I have that core concept guiding me. More details to come regarding the newsletter very soon.
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 (or not-so-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 Sunday, April 27, 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’s 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…
- MASSAGE
- TIMES
- RUFFLE
- FISH
- PERCENT
- SHOCK
- MEATBALL
- GOLDFISH
- COMBO
- LOCK
- EQUALS
- THATCH
- CHEF
- MINUS
- TUFT
- TAKI
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — you can probably C what’s going on here if you don’t divide your attention
- Green group — some of these are too small to style properly
- Blue group — treats you might want to savor
- Purple group — like Spotify and H&M
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 — calculator buttons
- Green group — amounts of hair
- Blue group — salty snack unit
- Purple group — Swedish _____
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 — calculator buttons (EQUALS, MINUS, PERCENT, TIMES)
- Green group — amounts of hair (LOCK, SHOCK, THATCH, TUFT)
- Blue group — salty snack unit (COMBO, GOLDFISH, RUFFLE, TAKI)
- Purple group — Swedish _____ (CHEF, FISH, MASSAGE, MEATBALL)
I scored a perfect game today to bring my streak up to 61 wins. Here’s how I fared:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
I suspected off the bat that there was probably some wordplay going on with TAKI. Maybe forms of transport with a letter changed, as in “taxi.” But that’s before I realized that GOLDFISH and RUFFLE were snacks and that TAKI should go with them. I didn’t know what else would fit with them, though, so I set that group aside for the time being.
Looking around, my brain drew a link between CHEF and MEATBALL. I vaguely remembered the phrase “Swedish FISH” and MASSAGE obviously made sense, so I got the purples first.
The yellows were up next after EQUALS and MINUS clicked together in my head. Since I had a good idea about what three of the blues were going to be, I was able to eliminate them from consideration from the other group. COMBO didn’t make sense with the remaining words, so I slammed the blues through, even though I’d never heard of that particular snack. I then realized the green connection just before submitting those for a perfect game.
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 Monday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I really love when artists who have hit the big time see one of their old songs that didn’t initially get a whole lot of attention become hits. We saw it with Chappell Roan and “Pink Pony Club” (which is perhaps the song of the 2020s so far). Doechii recently released a re-recorded version of a song she first put out in 2019 and it hit the top 10 of the Billboard 100.
Anxiety is beautiful. Well, it’s not, but Doechii’s song titled “Anxiety” is. She sings and raps about anxiety and some of society’s ills over the instrumental of “Somebody That I Used to Know.”
The new video, which just came out last week, is very clever too. It’s full of stressful moments that are revisited, underscoring the recurring nature of anxiety and how bad situations often repeat. Doechii revisits her past self here as well – the original 2019 video for the song shows her performing it in her bedroom, and that’s what the video opens with.
Great stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing Doechii perform at a festival this summer:
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.
