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

One of the hardest Connections I’ve played in recent memory with every clue being two words and a whole bunch of names.

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.

  • WHITNEY HOUSTON
  • LINDA HAMILTON
  • RIVER PHOENIX
  • JOHN DENVER
  • GETTY IMAGES
  • ELBOW GREASE
  • CAN OPENER
  • SOMETHING WICKED
  • FAT CATS
  • HEAD WAITER
  • MERV GRIFFIN
  • BROAD BEAN
  • NY GIANT
  • MET HALFWAY
  • WC FIELDS
  • DIET SPRITE

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

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - CAN OPENER
  • 🟢 Green Group - FAT CATS
  • 🔵 Blue Group - WHITNEY HOUSTON
  • 🟣 Purple Group - DIET SPRITE

The hints for the Connections groups today are:

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - When you gotta go you gotta go
  • 🟢 Green Group - Sing on stage
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Fun afternoon educational activity
  • 🟣 Purple Group - Fantasy land

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

  • 🟡 Yellow Group - Starting with terms for toilet
  • 🟢 Green Group - Ending in musicals
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Starting with US Museums
  • 🟣 Purple Group - Ending in fantasy creatures

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 - Starting with terms for toilet (CAN OPENER, HEAD WAITER, JOHN DENVER, WC FIELDS)
  • 🟢 Green Group - Ending in musicals (ELBOW GREASE, FAT CATS, LINDA HAMILTON, SOMETHING WICKED)
  • 🔵 Blue Group - Starting with US Museums (BROAD BEAN, GETTY IMAGES, MET HALFWAY, WHITNEY HOUSTON)
  • 🟣 Purple Group - Ending in fantasy creatures (DIET SPRITE, MERV GRIFFIN, NY GIANT, RIVER PHOENIX)

I think you might have been able to figure out the basic format of this, as with all the names, you are almost certainly not going to group them in an easy category like actors or singers. Rather, anything with two words in Connections is likely to use the first or second word as the clue. And these all do, but it’s hard. Yellow Group starts the pattern of taking things I thought I knew, and ruining them, like John Denver. There is not a “last name cities” group, I’ll tell you that, despite two others.

Green Group may not be that bad if you have any musical knowledge at all, given that these are some of the most famous ones that there are. Still, if you’re getting distracted by the actual meaning of the words, that would be tough.

Well, Blue Group really screwed me. Even after the fact, I do not know any of these museums except the Met, as when I got to them, they are nearby where I live, and I do not live any of these places nor have I gone to any of these. Call me uncultured, I guess. Which one of these is the best to go to if I do end up by any of them someday? Let me know.

Purple Group makes sense but was still hard to figure out. Sprite is a fantasy creature but it was hard to get out of the soda mindset. River Phoenix was also in my last name cities list that did not pan out. This one was hard.

So, very tough puzzle today. How did you do?

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