Looking for Friday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:

Things always get a bit screwed up in Connections when there is even a single word I don’t know, as three words don’t make a group, and that’s what’s happened today.

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.

  • MINT
  • PRESS
  • GRAIN
  • BEANS
  • STARCH
  • CAT
  • CUCUMBER
  • RINGS
  • GUM
  • FOLD
  • KNOTS
  • CUSTOMER
  • WASH
  • MOUTHWASH
  • BURL
  • SPRAY

Here is a hint that gives you one word per group:

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - GUM
  • 🟢 Green Group - FOLD
  • 🔵 Blue Group - GRAIN
  • 🟣 Purple Group - CUSTOMER

The hints for the Connections groups today are:

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Breathe into your hand
  • 🟢 Green Group - Looking smooth and sharp
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Knock knock surface
  • 🟣 Purple Group - _____ [Word]

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Breath Fresheners
  • 🟢 Green Group - Things Done To A Dress Shirt At The Laundry
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Features of Wood
  • 🟣 Purple Group - “Cool” Things in Expressions

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:

  • Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Breath Fresheners (GUM, MINT, MOUTHWASH, SPRAY)
  • 🟢 Green Group - Things Done To A Dress Shirt At The Laundry (FOLD, PRESS, STARCH, WASH)
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Features of Wood (BURL, GRAIN, KNOTS, RINGS)
  • 🟣 Purple Group - “Cool” Things in Expressions (BEANS, CAT, CUCUMBER, CUSTOMER)

An easy puzzle today that turned tough. Two categories were a bit easier than the NYT meant them to be, I think. I just got “things that go in your mouth” instead of specifically about your breath, but obviously that’s the same thing for Yellow Group.

Green Group, meanwhile, I just figured out “laundry” rather than specifically dress shirts, though I suppose that’s where starching comes in. Everything else in the laundry is probably going to avoid that step. Man, the cost of dry cleaning has gotten so high these days.

Blue Group is when things got trickier for me, as I had no idea what “Burl” was at all. Looking it up now, I see that it’s “a tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner.” Still have never seen that. The rest, I get, but they did not immediately jump to mind as a group, given that they can mean other things that could fit with other categories.

Purple Group is just a strange concept, going, expressions that I don’t think anyone actually says in real life anymore, even if we have all heard them at one point or another. Usually in fiction or film, I would reckon. Cool cat? I mean who says cool cat? Anyway, that was hard to piece together as well.

Which ones tripped you up today?

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