Looking for Monday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there, Connectors! I hope your week is off to a fantastic start.
Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to see stand-up comedian Josh Johnson live. Johnson has blown up over the last couple of years after he started uploading one of his timely performances to YouTube every week.
His output is remarkable, as he’s able to to take something that’s happening in the news and turn it into an hour-long show within a few days (albeit with some tangents). It surely helps that he’s also a writer and correspondent on The Daily Show. As an example of what he can do, just take this set about Blue Origin’s recent flight to space with the likes of Gayle King and Katy Perry on board:
The set I saw (the first of three sold-out shows Johnson had at the same venue that day) wasn’t quite as news-driven. It was more of a mix of anecdotes from Johnson’s life. Still, he had both my partner and I laughing all the way through.
Johnson is such a terrific comedic storyteller and he seems to be a very thoughtful, warm person. I find him, his work and his approach to community building quite inspiring. This paragraph from a recent Rolling Stone profile (regarding Johnson’s success and current Flowers Tour) really resonated with me:
In another testament to the theme, Johnson often encourages fans to bring flowers to the shows as a friendship offering to one another. Sometimes he’ll hire people to pass them out, too. “Flowers are like us,” he says. “They’re temporary, they’re beautiful. You keep planting seeds, they keep growing. They’re incredibly resilient, and I think that they’re a reminder of how much time we have and what we do with that time.”
Before we begin, we have a great little community on Discord, where we chat about NYT Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot, and you’re more than welcome to hang out with us.
Discord is 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. I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Tuesday, April 29, 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…
- LADDER
- BATTER
- SUIT
- CANDLESTICK
- INFIELD
- ROPE
- PASTE
- PITCHER
- GEMSTONE
- MOUNTAIN
- PLATE
- MIXTURE
- TREE
- DOUGH
- RHOMBUS
- PLACEMAT
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — somewhere between base ingredients and the final result
- Green group — you’re unlikely to see most of these at a cookout
- Blue group — ranks and stairs would fit in here
- Purple group — perhaps you might find these in the rough
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 — cooking concoctions
- Green group — seen on a table at a dinner party
- Blue group — things to climb
- Purple group — what “diamond” can refer to
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 — cooking concoctions (BATTER, DOUGH, MIXTURE, PASTE)
- Green group — seen on a table at a dinner party (CANDLESTICK, PITCHER, PLACEMAT, PLATE)
- Blue group — things to climb (LADDER, MOUNTAIN, ROPE, TREE)
- Purple group — what “diamond” can refer to (GEMSTONE, INFIELD, RHOMBUS, SUIT)
That’s a 63rd win in a row for your ol’ pal. Here’s how I fared:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
There are a bunch of baseball-related words here – BATTER, INFIELD, PITCHER and PLATE. I didn’t think they’d form a group though. They felt a little too disjointed as two related to players and the others referred to parts of the field. I realized pretty quickly that BATTER would go with what turned out to be the rest of the yellows.
Next up was a guess of CANDLESTICK, PLATE, PITCHER and SUIT, as in things you might see at a fancy dinner. I was close, but PLACEMAT turned out to be the right fourth word here, not SUIT.
I then clocked that there was probably a baseball reference here after all. INFIELD, RHOMBUS and GEMSTONE can all be diamonds. I didn’t see what else could go with them.
However, after narrowing that down, I realized there were a bunch of things you could climb, thanks to LADDER. That gave me the blues.
For a moment, I was confused. I didn’t think I’d ever heard of a SUIT being called a diamond or vice-versa. But it finally dawned on me just as I was about to look it up. It’s a reference to diamonds as a SUIT of cards. D’oh.
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 Wednesday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I’ve been absolutely devouring everything I can about Electric Callboy over the last week or so. I’ve no idea how I was unfamiliar with them until now, but I’m absolutely in love with what they’re doing. They’ve created a blend of pop, techno and metal that’s just mesmerizing.
I understand that their music won’t be for everyone. So, instead of bringing you two of their songs in a row (after I served you all the brilliant “Ratatata” yesterday), I thought I’d share this super interesting behind-the-scenes look at life on tour with the band.
YouTuber Ian Roberts, a.k.a TankTheTech, is a long-time roadie and has been working with Electric Callboy as a tour manager over the last couple of years. He’s been vlogging his experience.
I’m a few episodes into the series and I’ve found it fascinating. I’ve really enjoyed getting a sense of what it might be like to run a tour for a reasonably well-known artist.
More importantly, I really like how much love everyone involved has for each other. It turns out it is possible to work professionally and respectfully with other people in a time-sensitive situation without tempers flaring. I wouldn’t want to work with yellers, and it’s cool to see that no one raises their voice here. Well, at least until the band members start screaming on stage:
That said, if you’re interested in joining me in going down the Electric Callboy rabbit hole, this is a fantastic reaction video from The Charismatic Voice, which was founded by singer, vocal coach and analyst Elizabeth Zharoff. The way Zharoff incorporates her pregnancy cravings into this analysis as not-so-subtle messages to her husband is incredibly endearing:
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.
