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 Wednesday, May 27:

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 small community (COMMUNE, HAMLET, TOWNSHIP, VILLAGE)

Straightforward enough. These are all small settlements.

Connections – Green Group

🟩 classic board games (BATTLESHIP, OPERATION, OTHELLO, TROUBLE)

BATTLESHIP is a naval combat simulation game, in which each player positions ships on their board without the other knowing the locations. The idea is to find and destroy the other player’s fleet by taking turns to fire shots at grid coordinates:

Invented in the 1960s, OPERATION is a game designed to test players’ hand-eye coordination and fine-motor functions. You know, like a surgeon! The aim is to remove “ailments” from a patient without touching the edges:

OTHELLO is a strategy game in which the aim is to sandwich discs of the other player’s color in between yours, so you can flip them over and claim them. Look, this video explains it a lot better than I can:

TROUBLE (which some, including myself, know better as Frustration ) is a classic dice-based game in which you try to move all of your pieces around a board before your opponents can. The die is typically in a bubble in the middle of the board, and it’s really fun to pop it:

🟦 homophones of ways of looking (AYE, LEAR, PIER, STAIR)

  • AYE > eye
  • LEAR > leer
  • PIER > peer
  • STAIR > stare

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 ending in the Little Women March sisters (BANJO, MACBETH, MONOGAMY, NUTMEG)

These reference the main characters from Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, Little Women . The four March sisters are:

  • BANJO > Jo
  • MACBETH > Beth
  • MONOGAMY > Amy
  • NUTMEG > Meg

Connections – Red Herrings

I almost got caught out by a red herring of title characters in Shakespeare plays: HAMLET, OTHELLO, (King) LEAR and MACBETH.

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 .