Honestly, some mornings the New York Times just wants to see us suffer. If you opened your grid today and saw a bunch of four-letter words that look almost identical, you aren't hallucinating. You’ve just walked straight into one of Wyna Liu’s favorite traps. The NYT Connections hints March 25 puzzle is a masterclass in redirection, blending presidential history with a very annoying set of anagrams.
If you're staring at the screen wondering why "ABEL" and "BELA" are staring back at you, take a breath. It’s not just you.
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The Vibe of Today's Puzzle
Today is all about clarity—or the total lack of it. We have a purple category that literally deals with how "clear" things are, which is ironic considering how muddy the board looks at first glance. You’ve got names that look like nicknames, words that look like they belong in a laundry room, and enough overlapping letters to make a Scrabble player sweat.
The trick today is to isolate the colors first. If you can spot the things that only come in two shades, you’ll clear the "noise" and actually be able to see the wordplay happening in the harder groups.
Hints for the March 25 Categories
Sometimes you just need a nudge, not the whole answer. Here’s how these groups break down without giving away the farm:
- Yellow Group: Think about things that don't need a technicolor filter. They are strictly two-toned.
- Green Group: This is the "look closer" group. It’s not about what the words mean, but what they are made of.
- Blue Group: These are casual ways to refer to men who lived in a very famous white house in D.C.
- Purple Group: Focus on a common idiom. If someone says "Clear as..." what comes next?
Diving Into the Specifics
The yellow category, BLACK-AND-WHITE THINGS, is your anchor today. CROSSWORD, OREO, PANDA, and TUXEDO are pretty distinct. Once you pull those out, the board stops looking like a chaotic mess and starts looking like a puzzle you can actually solve.
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Now, let's talk about those blue nicknames. ABE (Lincoln), CAL (Coolidge), DICK (Nixon), and TEDDY (Roosevelt) form the U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NICKNAMES group. If you aren't a history buff, "CAL" might be the one that trips you up. Most people think of "Silent Cal," but in the heat of a word game, it’s easy to forget.
The Anagram Nightmare
The green category is where most streaks go to die today. ANAGRAMS. It’s a simple concept, but seeing ABEL, ABLE, BALE, and BELA all at once is psychological warfare. They all use the exact same four letters. You might be tempted to put "ABEL" with the other names, but "BELA" (likely a nod to Béla Fleck or Béla Lugosi) is the key. They are all permutations of A-B-L-E.
Clear as... What?
Finally, we have the purple category: CLEAR AS ___.
- A BELL
- CRYSTAL
- DAY
- MUD
"Clear as mud" is the classic sarcastic retort when something makes no sense. It’s fitting for a puzzle that tries this hard to confuse you with spelling variations.
Why Today Was Tricky
The overlap is the real killer here. You see "ABE" and "ABEL" and your brain immediately wants to group them because they look related. They aren't. One is a nickname for Abraham; the other is a biblical name that happens to be an anagram of "ABLE."
Connections is rarely about the first definition that pops into your head. It’s about the third or fourth. When you see "BALE," don't just think of hay. Think about the letters. When you see "DICK," don't just think of a name; think of "Tricky Dick" Nixon.
Success Strategies for Connections
If you want to keep your streak alive through the rest of the week, stop clicking so fast. Seriously. The "one away" notification is a gift, but it's also a trap that tempts you to waste your remaining guesses on slight variations of the same wrong idea.
Before you hit submit on that last group, look at the words you didn't pick. Do they fit anywhere else? If you can’t justify why "BELA" is on the board other than it being an anagram, then it probably belongs in an anagram group.
Try to find the most "solid" group first—usually the yellow or blue—to narrow the field. Today, that was definitely the black-and-white items. Once those are gone, the patterns in the remaining eight words become much louder.
Go back to the grid and look at the remaining words. If you've already solved the yellow and blue, you're left with the anagrams and the "Clear as" phrases. At that point, even if you don't "get" the connection, the math is on your side.
Check your progress against the history of the game. Editors like Wyna Liu often reuse certain "types" of categories—like fill-in-the-blanks or "words that start with a body part"—so keeping a mental log of past tricks helps a lot.
Now that you've navigated the 16-word minefield for today, you can go back to your coffee and wait for the next grid to drop at midnight. If you're looking for more ways to sharpen your word game skills, try playing a few rounds of the Mini Crossword to get your brain in that specific "NYT logic" headspace before tackling the main event tomorrow.