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 Thursday, August 27:

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

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Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase

🟨 electric things (ELECTRIC EEL, LIGHTNING, LIVE WIRE, PIKACHU)

I think the first two of those are fairly self-evident.

A LIVE WIRE can just be a wire with electrical current flowing through it. It can also be a very energetic – perhaps “electric” – person.

PIKACHU is the mascot of Pokémon. It’s a yellow mouse-like creature with a tail shaped like a lightning bolt. It has electric powers. Most importantly, it’s super cute:

Connections – Green Group

🟩 moved to tears (CHOKED UP, EMOTIONAL, MISTY, OVERCOME)

The category title takes care of things for us here.

🟦 shades of gray (ASH, DOVE, PEWTER, SLATE)

Alas, I can’t find photos I’m able to use for each shade, unfortunately. So I’ll just share a couple of facts instead.

There’s a Pokémon fan game called Pokémon Ash Gray , which I learned about mere seconds ago.

Also, in 2012, entrepreneur Shed Simove tried to cash in on the Fifty Shades of Grey trend by releasing a book called Fifty Shades of Gray. It contained 200 blank pages in increasingly dark shades of the color gray. It was a novelty notebook, basically.

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 music genre plus starting letter (BROCK, NEMO, SPUNK, WRAP)

  • BROCK > rock
  • NEMO > emo
  • SPUNK > punk
  • WRAP > rap

Connections – Red Herrings

Today’s red herring concerned the Pokémon anime. As I mentioned, PIKACHU is the franchise’s mascot. In the anime, it’s the companion of main character ASH Ketchum. Here’s how the two first met:

And here’s a clip of them catching up with their friends, MISTY and BROCK:

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 .