Note : Make sure to complete today’s NYT Connections before reading further! We’ll be getting into spoilers for today’s game pretty quickly. If you need some help to complete the grid, you can find my NYT Connections hints and answers column for today via my author page .

Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to my deeper dive into today’s Connections answers. The idea behind this is to help clear things up for anyone who isn’t sure how today’s groups fit together.

If I’ve missed any red herrings or misunderstood something, let me know via email or on Discord . I don’t typically look at X or check the comments here.

I’m going to assume that you’ve already beaten today’s game. We’re going straight into spoiler territory here. So, consider this your one and only warning .

Here are today’s NYT Connections answers explained (and any red herrings I spot) for Thursday, April 23:

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 border (FLANK, NEIGHBOR, SKIRT, TOUCH)

We’re kicking off with a synonym group today. These all mean next to or touching something else.

Connections – Green Group

🟩 kinds of fiction (HISTORICAL, LITERARY, PULP, SCIENCE)

Again, straightforward. The category title pretty much takes care of things here.

🟦 words in a planetary mnemonic (EDUCATED, MOTHER, MY, VERY)

This is where things get interesting today. I’ve no idea how I remembered the phrase “My Very Educated Mother.” I didn’t know what it referred to meant.

There are multiple variants of the full phrase, such as:

  • My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas
  • My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos
  • My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles

This is an expression that’s designed to help people remember the order of the planets in our solar system, based on the initial letter of each word. So, it would translate to:

  • My > Mercury
  • Very > Venus
  • Educated > Earth
  • Mother > Mars
  • Just > Jupiter
  • Served > Saturn
  • Us > Uranus
  • Nine > Neptune
  • Pizzas > Pluto

The version of the phrase you might use depends on whether you consider Pluto to be a planet. I sure do!

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 starting with four-letter '80s bands (ASIAGO, DEVOTE, TOTORO, WHAMMY)

  • ASIAGO > Asia
  • DEVOTE > Devo
  • TOTORO > Toto
  • WHAMMY > Wham

Connections – Red Herrings

There was a reference to the wonderful movie My Neighbor Totoro on the top line, but I don’t count that as a red herring since it’s only three words. If you saw a genuine red herring, let me know!

If you’d like to chat about today’s game of Connections and just about anything else with me and a very lovely group of people, you can do just that in our Discord community . We’d love for you to hang out with us.

I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes .