Looking for Wednesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! I hope you’re settling into 2025 without having to nurse any hangovers from your New Year’s festivities.
Yesterday, I shared a story involving a mishap my former partner had one New Year’s night. Now it’s my turn.
Another year, we decided to stay home and cook a nice dinner together. One of my tasks was to shuck oysters using the knife I had received for that very purpose at Christmas.
Thing is, I was paying too much attention to the N.Y.E. festivities from back home on a livestream and forgot to put back on the protective glove I had been using. I think you can figure out what happened from there. Every scar tells a story and for the last 11 years or so, there’s been a half-inch one on my hand related to that incident.
One other N.Y.E., we were in Sicily and again decided to stay in our rental and cook a nice meal. But after buying all of our ingredients, we both took ill and weren’t able to eat anything. At least the food stayed good enough to use the next day when we were feeling better.
Anyway, before we get started, 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 Thursday, January 2, 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…
- TIME
- CLOCK
- DONUT
- PADDLE
- TIRED
- MONTH
- BEAT
- REGISTER
- CATCH
- TAG
- INCH
- DAYS
- METER
- JUROR
- NOTICE
- RHYTHM
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — realize
- Green group — keep it steady
- Blue group — part of a collective
- Purple group — “ear” and “house” would fit in here
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 — perceive
- Green group — cadence
- Blue group — one in a group of 12
- Purple group — dog ____
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 — perceive (CATCH, CLOCK, NOTICE, REGISTER)
- Green group — cadence (BEAT, METER, RHYTHM, TIME)
- Blue group — one in a group of 12 (DONUT, INCH, JUROR, MONTH)
- Purple group — dog ____ (DAYS, PADDLE, TAG, TIRED)
My quest for a perfect game goes on, but my win streak is up to 11. Here’s how I fared:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟦🟦
🟦🟪🟪🟪
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
I got the yellows right away this time. I thought at first RHYTHM might go with a wordplay group before I realized that it made sense with the rest of the greens.
I did not see anything at all that made sense for the blues or purples, though I had an inkling that DAYS and MONTH would end up in separate groups. I took a stab in the dark with a guess of TIRED, JUROR, PADDLE and MONTH. Nothing doing, which meant there were two blues and two purples in that guess.
Next up was DONUT, DAYS, TIRED and PADDLE, which put me one away from a group. It was at that point things clicked together: dog TIRED, dog DAYS and dog(gy) PADDLE, so TAG had to be the missing link.
By the by, if you’ve been on the fence about joining the aforementioned Discord, you should know that a) everyone in the group has been absolutely lovely so far and b) there’s now a space for folks to share their pet pics. So many adorable photos already.
Back to today’s game! I didn’t figure out the blue connection before submitting those words, but of course that was the link between them. Mmmm… donuts.
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 Friday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I was tempted to ditch my planned recommendation to drop in Florence + the Machine’s terrific “Dog Days Are Over” given today’s purple group, but I included that song in the column a few months back.
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day played on the radio the other day and although I’ve heard it a million times, I misheard one of the lyrics and it amused me very much. I heard “I walk alone” as “I wore cologne.” Anyway, good song. I very much enjoyed hearing the band play it live last summer:
Have a great day! Make sure to drink enough water! 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.
