Welcome back, Connectioneers! If you’re looking for help with today’s puzzling NYT Connections puzzle, I’m here to offer my assistance with some extra clues and the solutions to the Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple groups.

It’s Saturday at last, and I’m looking forward to a nice rainy weekend. Monsoons have officially begun in the high desert mountains I call home. Plenty of rain to keep us indoors, preferably drinking something hot and steamy while staring out the window at the world gone all green and alive. We have another NYT Connections to solve, so let’s go ahead and group some words!

Today’s Connections is a 4/5 difficulty according to Connections Bot. Shall we?

If you’re looking for Friday’s Connections guide, it’s right here .

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.

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Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase

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.

NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Saturday July 18

Below, we’ll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.

Here are today’s Connections words:

  • quiz
  • double dribble
  • opinion
  • carry
  • score
  • travel
  • tart
  • lives
  • culture
  • time
  • fly
  • goaltend
  • health
  • view
  • attitude
  • mind

Here’s an Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

  • 🟡Yellow group – You could add FOUL to this group.
  • 🔵Blue group – Elements you might find in Super Mario Bros , for instance
  • 🟢Green group – Similar to a way of thinking.
  • 🟣Purple group – Add a word that rhymes with “shop” before each of these words.

One Word for Each Connections Group:

  • 🟡Yellow group – Double Dribble
  • 🔵Blue group – Health
  • 🟢Green group – Opinion
  • 🟣Purple group – Tart

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

  • Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
  • 🟡Yellow group – Commit a basketball violation
  • 🔵Blue group – Things tracked in video games
  • 🟢Green group – Belief
  • 🟣Purple group – Words after “pop”

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 . The Connections answers are:
  • 🟡Yellow group – carry, double dribble, goaltend, view
  • 🔵Blue group – health, lives, score, time
  • 🟢Green group – attitude, mind, opinion, view
  • 🟣Purple group – culture, fly, quiz, tart

Here’s the finished grid:

Today’s NYT Connections is a 4/5 on the Connections Bot difficulty scale and while it did stymie me for a spell, and I got a couple “one away” misses, overall I think it felt more like a 3/5.

The Yellow words were, fittingly, quite obvious if you know anything about basketball, and since I played basketball in high school, I know a thing or two. Of these, I’d say GOALTEND is the one I’ve encountered least. The rule was introduced in the 1940s to prevent the tallest players from just jumping up and swatting away shots as they descended toward the hoop. The other three are very obvious basketball violations.

The Green words came to me next, mostly because ATTITUDE, OPINION and VIEW were so obvious. MIND was a bit trickier, given the similarity to HEALTH. I suppose SCORE was also a bit of a red herring for the basketball words.

I didn’t get the connection between the Purple words until after I’d plugged them in. How could CULTURE and TART or FLY and QUIZ relate? As always, in retrospect the answer is obvious: Pop culture, pop quiz, poptart – only pop fly really me off and, well, that’s another basketball term, so another red herring in a sense.

How’d you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook .

Find more guides to Wordle, Pips and Strands on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Let me know if you have any fun puzzle games in your rotation that I should try on Twitter , Instagram , or Facebook . Have a great Sunday!