It’s March 1st and the world seems a little bit crazier every day. As we begin the third month of the year, it takes just a quick glance at the news to see where 2026 is headed. Fortunately, we have some diversions, including today’s NYT Connections puzzle, to keep our minds from becoming too occupied by stressful international and domestic affairs.
My weekend streaming guide is also live, with plenty of ideas for new TV shows and movies to watch this weekend. It’s hard to keep track with so many different subscriptions, from Netflix to Apple TV.
In any case, we have words to group, so let’s solve this Connections!
If you’re looking for Saturday’s Connections guide, it’s right here.
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.
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.
NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, March 1
Below, we’ll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.
Here are today’s Connections words:
- ladder
- canapé
- smiling face with sunglasses
- knuckle sandwich
- palm tree
- nail gun
- licorice pizza
- hard hat
- hors d’oeuvre
- luggage
- tool belt
- copy pasta
- tapa
- airplane
- finger food
- johannesburger
An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group
Here’s an extra hint to help you solve each Connections group today:
- 🟡Yellow group – pre-meal munching
- 🔵Blue group – what you might include in a text about your trip
- 🟢Green group – along with an orange vest and a measuring tape
- 🟣Purple group – the second word is something you might eat after the Yellow Group
One Word for Each Connections Group:
Here’s one word from each group to help get you started:
- 🟡Yellow group – finger food
- 🔵Blue group – luggage
- 🟢Green group – nail gun
- 🟣Purple group – knuckle sandwich
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Little Bite
- 🔵Blue group – Vacation Emoji
- 🟢Green group – Construction Equipment
- 🟣Purple group – Things You Don’t Eat That End In Foods
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 – canapé, finger food, hors d’oeuvre, tapa
- 🔵Blue group – airplane, luggage, palm tree, smiling face with sunglasses
- 🟢Green group – hard hat, ladder, nail gun, tool belt
- 🟣Purple group – copypasta, johannesburger, knuckle sandwich, licorice pizza
Here’s the finished grid:
Today’s NYT Connections was super daunting at first. I stared at the grid trying to figure out what the red herrings might be, but fortunately for me I’m a huge fan of food. It wasn’t long before I saw canapé and tapa and finger food and hors d’oeuvre and started feeling hungry for small bites or, well, “Little Bite” as the Yellow Group is themed.
The Green Group ended up being just as obvious, once I’d cleared out the Yellow words. Hard Hat and Ladder and Nail Gun and Tool Belt were all clearly “Construction Equipment” though I suppose the red herring here is that these, like some of the Blue words, could be emojis.
For the first time in a very long time, I guessed Purple before the end. This wasn’t obvious at first, but again my deep and abiding love of all things food came to my rescue. copyPASTA, johannesBURGER, knuckle SANDWICH, licorice PIZZA (nobody should consider licorice a food, yuck) all very obviously types of delicious food.
This left what I had already suspected would be some type of emoji words, though it was pretty obvious in the end that Vacation (or travel) Emoji were the theme, with AIRPLANE, LUGGAGE, PALM TREE and SMILING FACE WITH SUNGLASSES. Now I want to go to the beach.
How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Let me know if you have any fun puzzle games in your rotation that I should try.
