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 right here :

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 Tuesday, August 25:

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Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 surface-level (COSMETIC, ONE-DIMENSIONAL, SKIN-DEEP, SUPERFICIAL)

These are all adjectives for things that lack emotional, intelligent, philosophical (etc.) depth.

Connections – Green Group

🟩 sci-fi phenomena (HYPERSPACE, PARALLEL UNIVERSE, TELEPORTATION, TIME WARP)

These are all concepts that are often featured in works of science fiction.

HYPERSPACE is a dimension through which travelers can cross vast distances quickly, often by moving faster than light or distorting a three-dimensional space to bring the destination much closer, effectively creating a shortcut. Also, it’s a Star Wars thing:

A PARALLEL UNIVERSE is one that’s adjacent to ours with slight or significant differences. These no evidence for the existence of PARALLEL UNIVERSEs as yet, but some physicists have theorized that they are out there. One notable use of PARALLEL UNIVERSEs in fiction is the multiverse in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

TELEPORTATION does exist, but only in the realm of quantum information . In sci-fi, it refers to the ability to transport an object, person, animal or energy to a destination without having to physically move it through space.

(Is the transporter in the Star Trek franchise really a teleportation device, given that it converts the subject into energy, beams it to a destination and then reconstitutes it? Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t have enough skin in the game to get into that debate.)

A TIME WARP is a spatial distortion that allows for time travel.

🟦 Stephen King film adaptations, starting with "The" (GREEN MILE, LONG WALK, RUNNING MAN, SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION)

Any time it comes up in conversation, which is more often than you might suspect, my mother and sister remain aghast that I have not yet seen The GREEN MILE :

I’d like to watch The LONG WALK , which came out last year. It has an interesting premise: Fifty young men are forced to keep a pace of at last three miles per hour on a nonstop walk, or face death. It’s based on the first novel that King wrote:

Like the endurance event of The LONG WALK, The RUNNING MAN has a televised spectacle at its core. The idea is that participants in a reality game show have to survive being hunted. I thought the adaptation that was released last year was okay, but I much prefer the 1987 film.

The novel was credited to Richard Bachman, which I somehow completely forgot King used as a pen name:

Frank Darabont is the director of The SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and The GREEN MILE, both of which received multiple Oscar nominations. It’s the first of those that he’s perhaps best known for. The SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION is an affecting, life-affirming prison drama that I haven’t seen in far too long:

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 ending in ice cream orders (HARLEM SHAKE, INSIDE SCOOP, LICKETY-SPLIT, TRAFFIC CONE)

  • HARLEM SHAKE > shake (or milkshake)
  • INSIDE SCOOP > scoop
  • LICKETY-SPLIT > split (as in a banana split)
  • TRAFFIC CONE > cone

Connections – Red Herrings

I didn’t see one in the yellow group, but there was a clear red herring of dance trends today with the TIME WARP:

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 .