Before we get to today’s Connections hints and answers, here are Tuesday’s:
It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means: it’s time for another game of Connections!
I’m trying to be more conscious about what I’m spending given the state of… well, everything. After buying prescription sunglasses and an air purifier recently, the only other major expense I have coming up is a Nintendo Switch 2 (well, maybe two since I have a pair of pre-orders locked in and I might sell one to a friend for face value). I have most of my planned travel for the rest of the year booked and paid for, with the possible exception of a vacation in the fall.
But yeah, unless some shows I simply have to go to are announced in the coming months, I don’t plan to have any other major outlays beyond than doing fun things with my loved ones. Maybe I’ll finally hire a personal trainer to help get me in shape. Otherwise, I’m going to cut back a bit on how much I’m investing and build up my emergency fund. You never know what’s around the corner.
(That said, I do want to buy myself a nice electric guitar this year. Or a bass. … Maybe both.)
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. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.
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Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, May 14 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…
- BABE
- PSYCHE
- DRAW
- NEO
- MNEMONIC
- BOLT
- KNEE
- WICK
- TED
- HYPER
- PULL
- GNOME
- KILO
- DUMBO
- META
- SUCK
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — like how paper towels and fountain pen nibs work
- Green group — anti and exo would fit in here
- Blue group — loquacious fauna who are the stars of the show
- Purple group — it feels like something should be left out of these
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 — absorb using capillary action
- Green group — Greek prefixes
- Blue group — titular talking animals of film
- Purple group — starting with silent letters
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 — absorb using capillary action (DRAW, PULL, SUCK, WICK)
- Green group — Greek prefixes (HYPER, KILO, META, NEO)
- Blue group — titular talking animals of film (BABE, BOLT, DUMBO, TED)
- Purple group — starting with silent letters (GNOME, KNEE, MNEMONIC, PSYCHE)
Not even close to a perfect game today, but I’ll take a 78th win in a row. Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟪🟨🟦
🟨🟦🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
Given that we had WICK (as in John Wick) on the grid just a few days ago, I was reasonably sure that word, NEO, MNEMONIC and TED would be a red herring. They’re all Keanu Reeves characters. Of course, I wasn’t even close to a group. Ah well.
I then tried DRAW, BOLT, PULL and WICK in terms of arming a bow or crossbow. I thought those words are all involved in the process. And yet I was one away from a group. Darn. I then figured that SUCK belonged there instead of BOLT to get the yellows.
MNEMONIC had to be either a memory thing or something to do with the pronunciation. I realized that KNEE, GNOME and PSYCHE worked with it in the latter case, so then I had the purples. (The “left” part of my hint nodded to the silent letters being at the beginning. I’m more than just a pretty face, y’know.)
After that, I went back to an earlier thought about BABE and DUMBO being animated movie stars, which allowed me to find the rest of the blues. TED is a bit of a cheat here since it’s a talking teddy bear.
That left the greens. My inkling here was that they’d be Greek prefixes, and I was dead on the money. Hooray.
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 Thursday’s game if you need them.
P.S. Related to today’s intro, I’m paying closer attention to what tours are coming to my neck of the woods. If there’s an old favorite, a relative newcomer I’m excited about or an artist I’ve always wanted to see stopping by, I’ll still be sure to snap up a ticket. I keep telling myself I should go to more random shows to discover new things. Maybe I’ll do that someday.
Anyway, a band I hadn’t thought about in a very long time are coming to my neck of the woods. As it turns out, Grandaddy haven’t toured North America in 20 years. They’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough second album, The Sophtware Slump. I always liked this dreamy song from that record:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
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