Looking for Friday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
I personally don’t believe this is the hardest puzzle away, other than the Purple Group, of course, but if you get the others, you don’t even have to solve it at all.
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. So, onto the hints and answers:
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers.
- FLIPPER
- FRITTER
- THROW
- KETTLE
- TENDER
- WING
- TRIFLE
- POPPER
- ARM
- WARM
- MICROWAVE
- FIDDLE
- STOVETOP
- KIND
- FIN
- SWEET
The hints for the Connections groups today are:
- Blue Group – Movie at home companion
- Yellow Group – Save and sound with you
- Green Group – Attached to various kinds of bodies
- Purple Group – What a waste
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- Blue Group – Popcorn-Making Methods
- Yellow Group – Loving
- Green Group – Appendages
- Purple Group – Squander with “Away”
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:
- Blue Group – Popcorn-Making Methods (KETTLE, MICROWAVE, POPPER, STOVETOP)
- Yellow Group – Loving (KIND, SWEET, TENDER, WARM)
- Green Group – Appendages (ARM, FIN, FLIPPER, WING)
- Purple Group – Squander with “Away” (FIDDLE, FRITTER, THROW, TRIFLE)
Blue Group is relevant to me today as I am off to see One Battle After Another in theaters as I hear that it might be the best movie this year. I do not ever get popcorn in movies, however, as it always gets stuck in my teeth and drives me nuts. What do they use to pop it there? Just a POPPER, right? I’ve never used anything at all but a MICROWAVE at home.
Alright Yellow Group had me for a moment with a tricky pair. Maybe I was just hungry after the popcorn clue, but WING and TENDER had me thinking that we were going down the edible chicken road. But no breast or thigh were present, so we flipped over to think kind and loving category.
Green Group was pretty easy, even if I got it third. All of these are attached to some body or another, even if two of those appear to be fish or water mammals at the very least. One bird and one, well I was going to say human, but some animals definitely have arms like monkeys, so I guess that doesn’t work.
Purple Group is as cryptic as ever as I would not have gotten this on my own, to be sure. I have literally never heard the phrases FIDDLE away or TRIFLE away. Maybe FRITTER away, though I’ve never said that out loud. THROW away, obviously, yes. ARM and THROW could go together as a misleading pair, but ARM fit too easily into Green Group to be used here.
I thought this one wasn’t bad, but let me know if you agree or disagree!
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.