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

It will help if you lived through a certain decade for today’s Strands but it’s not a full requirement if you’re knowledgeable enough.

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.

  • STICK FIGURE
  • MINISKIRT
  • LOG CABIN
  • SUN
  • TAN LINE
  • BRANCH OUT
  • HOUSE
  • TWIGGY
  • TREE
  • MOD
  • SIN CITY
  • GROW
  • COS LETTUCE
  • EXPAND
  • CARNABY STREET
  • DIVERSIFY

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

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - EXPAND
  • 🟢 Green Group - HOUSE
  • 🔵 Blue Group - MINISKIRT
  • 🟣 Purple Group - TAN LINE

The hints for the Connections groups today are:

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Broaden horizons
  • 🟢 Green Group - Rendered in crayon
  • 🔵 Blue Group - A certain decade
  • 🟣 Purple Group - Math homework

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Widen One’s Scope
  • 🟢 Green Group - Features of a Kid’s Drawing
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Associated with Swinging London in the 1960s
  • 🟣 Purple Group - Starting with Abbreviated Math Functions

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:

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Widen One’s Scope (BRANCH OUT, DIVERSIFY, EXPAND, GROW)
  • 🟢 Green Group - Features of a Kid’s Drawing (HOUSE, STICK FIGURE, SUN, TREE)
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Associated with Swinging London in the 1960s (CARNABY STREET, MINISKIRT, MOD, TWIGGY)
  • 🟣 Purple Group - Starting with Abbreviated Math Functions (COS LETTUCE, LOG CABIN, SIN CITY, TAN LINE)

Yellow Group was pretty easy today, as there are not all that many alternate connections here. I suppose Grow and Tree, but past that, not a whole lot. But after this, things certainly do get more difficult.

Green Group is tough, despite being low on the difficulty ladder most of the time. Even having two kids, only Stick Figure stood out, as you are obviously going to try to connect the other ones to other things, and grouping them like this is very difficult. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people got this last.

Blue Group requires at least some knowledge of the ‘60s, and the ’60s in a specific area, as well, London. I did actually know these, surprisingly enough, but I will say I did not know that Miniskirts appeared to be invented all the way back then. I suppose that’s one immortal contribution of the era.

Purple Group? What is Cos Lettuce? Come on. At that point you know it has to be the first word that is the main fixture of the group, and if you are especially math-minded this may have come to you quickly. It has been a while for me, but I managed to get these together in the end.

What tripped you up today?

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