Each day’s game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before today’s NYT Connections hints, here’s what you missed on Wednesday:
Hey there, Connectors! I hope you’ve had a good week so far.
I don’t get mad about things in my personal or professional life very often. Issues at a broader level (for instance, societal injustices) infuriate me, but I’m a pretty laidback chap otherwise.
This week, though, I feared I was going to lose it. I was busy working when I got a notification that my weekly meal box had been delivered one morning. “Cool,” I thought, “I’ll pick it up this afternoon when I’m done.” But when I got there, the box was nowhere to be seen in my building’s entrance.
It had definitely been delivered, since I was sent photos to show it was in the lobby. Someone must have pinched it. The building management couldn’t help, since a couple of other residents get meal boxes from the same company. So there was no way to be sure who took mine.
This hasn’t happened to me before with any package I’ve had delivered in the 28 months I’ve lived in my building. I’m just going to have to be quicker off the mark to pick up next week’s box.
Before we start, I want to mention the great community we have on Discord, where we chat about Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. It’s a lovely, welcoming group of folks. I like to call it our cozy little corner of the internet. You’re more than welcome to join us. Don’t be shy!
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, January 29 are coming right up. Let’s get rolling!
NYT Connections – How To Play
Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT’s website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.
Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don’t know how they hit together or what the category for each group is: that’s what you have to figure out.
There’s only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it’s game over.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by blue, green and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs – part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.
As with Wordle and similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.
Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow – correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.
NYT Connections Hints – Today’s Word List
Scroll slowly! I’ll first give you a list of today’s words, then a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll tell you the category names, followed by the full answers.
Today’s 16 words are…
- GOREY
- SILVERSTEIN
- GRIZZLY
- BEAR
- GRIMM
- GOLDILOCKS
- STAIN
- SCARRY
- FIBERGLASS
- SMUG
- BED
- LINER
- FOUNDATION
- STUMBLER
- BRONZER
- PORRIDGE
NYT Connections Hints
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- 🟨 Yellow group — they might lead to a look
- 🟩 Green group — the stuff of fairy tales
- 🟦 Blue group — in the end, bars and kitchens would be even messier without them
- 🟪 Purple group — as with a terrible band, these might sound like torture
NYT Connections Hints – One Answer Per Group
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Let’s take a look at one answer for each group.
Here we go…
- 🟨 Yellow group — STAIN
- 🟩 Green group — BED
- 🟦 Blue group — STUMBLER
- 🟪 Purple group — GRIMM
NYT Connections Hints – Groups/Categories
Today’s Connections groups are…
- 🟨 Yellow group — makeup
- 🟩 Green group — featured in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”
- 🟦 Blue group — ending with drinking vessels
- 🟪 Purple group — homophones of words meaning “brutal”
NYT 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 last chance to look away.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
- 🟨 Yellow group — makeup (BRONZER, FOUNDATION, LINER, STAIN)
- 🟩 Green group — featured in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” (BEAR, BED, GOLDILOCKS, PORRIDGE)
- 🟦 Blue group — ending with drinking vessels (FIBERGLASS, SILVERSTEIN, SMUG, STUMBLER)
- 🟪 Purple group — homophones of words meaning “brutal” (GOREY, GRIMM, GRIZZLY, SCARRY)
A very interesting collection of words today! I figured SILVERSTEIN, GOLDILOCKS and BRONZER might go together as they start with silver, gold and bronze, respectively. But I didn’t see what else might go with them. FIBREGLASS was the only thing that sort of made sense with having a proper word at the beginning, but I didn’t think it worked.
So, I turned my attention elsewhere. I paired up BRONZER with the rest of the makeup words to get the yellows. The GOLDILOCKS words then got me the greens (having GRIMM in the mix was a fun nod to The Brothers Grimm and their fairy tales).
SCARRY brought to mind scary, and it fit with GOREY and GRIMM. GRIZZLY made sense as well, and I had the purples. They refer to scary, gory, grim and grisly.
At that point, the blue connection jumped out at me since they all ended in types of drink receptacles: glass, stein, mug and tumbler.
Fun one today. A perfect game extends my current streak to 334 wins. I’m a month away from an entire year-long streak!
How did you get on today? Here’s my grid:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
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. That purple group has me tempted to drop in a brutal metal track as today’s recommendation, but I’ll spare you this time. In fact, let’s go entirely in the opposite direction, with a funky, jazzy soul number from 1977 – “As” by Stevie Wonder:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!
Please follow my blog for more NYT Connections hints and help with 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. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.
