You’ve been there. You stare at sixteen little boxes on a screen, and suddenly, your brain just stops working. The July 14 NYT Connections puzzle is one of those that feels like a personal attack from the editors. Honestly, it’s kinda rude how they set these up sometimes. You think you see a pattern, you commit, and then—one away.
It happens to the best of us. This specific puzzle, #764 (since it’s now 2026 and we’re looking back at the July 14, 2025 board), was a masterclass in the "Red Herring."
Wyna Liu and the team at the Times really leaned into pop culture and linguistic trickery for this one. If you found yourself pulling your hair out over the Disney references or getting sucked into the Spice Girls trap, you weren’t alone. Let’s break down how to actually solve this thing without losing your mind.
The July 14 Trap That Caught Everyone
Before we even get into the hints, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Or rather, the five Spice Girls in the room.
The board had SPORTY, GINGER, SCARY, and BABY. If you’re a child of the 90s, your thumb probably hit those four faster than you could say "zig-a-zig-ah." But here’s the thing: Connections hates you. Okay, maybe not you specifically, but it hates an easy win.
In this puzzle, those words were split across three different categories. Using them as a group was a fast track to a "Mistake" notification. It’s a classic move where the puzzle designers use a very strong cultural association to hide the actual logical links.
NYT Connections Hints July 14: A Little Help Before the Reveal
If you're still playing and just want a nudge, here are some ways to think about the words without me just handing you the answers.
- Yellow Group: Think about art supplies or paint swatches. If you were painting a nursery or a very specific car, what would you call these colors?
- Green Group: This is all about the "vroom." Imagine a TV commercial for a high-end vehicle. What adjectives are the narrators whispering while the car zips around a mountain curve?
- Blue Group: This one is a "Word Before" category. Think of a very famous name—someone who might be a neighbor, a pirate, or a country singer.
- Purple Group: This is the toughest. It involves Walt Disney, but with a twist. Look at the words and try removing one letter from the end. Does a familiar character appear?
Breaking Down the July 14 Categories
Sometimes you just need to see the logic to understand why your brain refused to cooperate.
The Blue Hues (Yellow)
This was arguably the most straightforward once you ignored the Spice Girls. BABY, ICE, POWDER, and SKY are all common prefixes for the color blue. It’s funny how "Baby" looks so much like a trap when it’s sitting next to "Scary," but in the context of a crayon box, it makes perfect sense.
The Fast and the Curious (Green)
The words COMPACT, FAST, SLEEK, and SPORTY described sports cars. This is where "Sporty" went to live. A lot of players got tripped up here because "Compact" feels like it could belong to a makeup category, but within the automotive theme, it holds its own.
The "Roger" Connection (Blue)
This was the most clever group of the day. GINGER, JOLLY, MISTER, and ROY.
- Ginger Rogers (The legendary dancer)
- Jolly Roger (The pirate flag)
- Mister Rogers (Everyone's favorite neighbor)
- Roy Rogers (The King of the Cowboys)
If you didn't grow up with mid-century American pop culture, this category was probably a nightmare. It's very "specific era" knowledge.
The Disney Letter Play (Purple)
The absolute hardest group was ABUT, BELLED, FLOUNDERS, and SCARY.
To solve it, you had to see the Disney characters hidden inside with one extra letter:
- ABU (from Aladdin) + T = ABUT
- BELLE (from Beauty and the Beast) + D = BELLED
- FLOUNDER (from The Little Mermaid) + S = FLOUNDERS
- SCAR (from The Lion King) + Y = SCARY
Basically, if you didn't spot this, don't feel bad. It requires a level of lateral thinking that most people don't have before their second cup of coffee.
Why This Puzzle Felt So Hard
According to data from the Connections Bot and various community threads on Reddit, the July 14 puzzle had a significantly lower "perfect solve" rate than the previous few days.
The overlap was brutal. You had ICE and POWDER which could easily be related to skiing or winter. You had SPORTY and FAST which feel like they belong together in almost any context. The puzzle constructor, Juliana Trask (who often works alongside Wyna Liu), mentioned in a 2025 interview that the goal is often to find words that have "high associative density."
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Translation: They pick words that fit in five different places just to see if you can find the only way they fit in four.
How to Get Better at Connections
If the NYT Connections hints July 14 didn't save your streak, don't sweat it. There are a few actual strategies that work better than just guessing.
First, never submit your first four. If you see a group of four that seems perfect, look for a fifth word that also fits. If there’s a fifth word, the category is a trap.
Second, try to find the "Purple" group first. It sounds counterintuitive, but if you can spot the wordplay—like the "Disney plus a letter" trick—the rest of the board usually falls into place. The purple group is almost always about how the word is built (rhymes, hidden words, fill-in-the-blanks) rather than what the word means.
Finally, use the shuffle button. Seriously. Our brains get "grid-locked" by seeing words next to each other. Shuffling breaks those visual associations and lets you see MINT next to FAIR (from the July 14, 2024 puzzle—different year, same struggle) instead of buried in a corner.
The best way to keep your streak alive is to walk away for ten minutes. Most of the time, the "aha!" moment happens when you aren't actually looking at the screen.
For your next game, try to identify the red herrings before you make a single click. Look for those groups of five or six words that seem too obvious. Once you eliminate the noise, the real connections start to scream at you.
Good luck with tomorrow's grid. Hopefully, it’s a little kinder than this one was.