Looking for Saturday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
Lazy Sunday is here and frankly I might have to just relent today and actually be lazy for once. After all, it’s also Father’s Day. As a dad, I get to do whatever I want on Father’s Day. I can stay in bed all morning. I don’t have to clean or take care of plants or pets. I can make others do the cooking and chores for me. I get to pick the movie we watch or the games we play. I am the king of my domain! But first, before we get to all that, we have some Connections to make. Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there who, like me, will actually probably do quite a bit on their special day.
How To Play Connections
Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.
The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.
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There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.
You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers.
- FATHER
- LANGUAGE
- SODA
- BLAST
- SMOKING
- MUD
- ACTION
- BURST
- CRUD
- POPULAR
- FUDGE
- BREW
- ROCKET FUEL
- NUDITY
- JAVA
- CURSES
Hints for the Connections groups today are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Get in a caffeine mindset for these words.
- 🔵Blue group – PG, PG-13, R etc.
- 🟢Green group – Swearing replacements.
- 🟣Purple group – One word can replace all four of these.
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Slang for coffee.
- 🔵Blue group– Considerations for movie ratings.
- 🟢Green group – “Aw, heck!”
- 🟣Purple group – What “pop” might mean.
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Brew, Java, Mud, Rocket Fuel
- 🔵Blue group – Action, Language, Nudity, Smoking
- 🟢Green group – Blast, Crud, Curses, Fudge
- 🟣Purple group – Burst, Father, Popular, Soda
I screwed up on one guess today, which I think is the first time since I’ve been handling the Sunday Connections Guide that I’ve done that. I’m just that good (or that lucky). I guessed LANGUAGE / NUDITY / SMOKING / CURSES, which frankly is as good as ACTION for a Connection if you ask me. In fact, CURSES or swear words are one of the main considerations for how a movie is rated. Call it a headfake or a cheap shot, but I replaced that with ACTION and it worked. I wasn’t sure what the purple words were but it made sense once I got them. A bubble bursts or pops, you can call your dad “pop” (happy Father’s Day!) and some people call SODA pop (weirdos) and of course, pop-culture is just POPULAR culture. I sort of wish CONNECTIONS would give us more than 16 words, with a couple of options that don’t fit at all, which would make getting that last row a bit harder. Maybe that’s masochistic of me. In any case, that’s a wrap, folks!
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