Waking up and opening the NYT Games app feels like a gamble. Some days you breeze through the Wordle in two tries, and you feel like a genius. Then you open Connections. Suddenly, you're staring at sixteen words that seem to have absolutely nothing in common, or worse, everything in common. It's frustrating. It's addictive. Honestly, today’s board is a perfect example of why this game has become a morning ritual for millions since it launched in 2023. If you’re looking for hints for NYT Connections today, you aren't alone; the crossover words are particularly nasty this time around.
Wyna Liu, the associate puzzle editor at the New York Times, has a specific talent for making you think you've found a category when you’ve actually just fallen into a trap. These traps are called "red herrings." They're the reason you just wasted two lives clicking on words that all seem to relate to, say, "cooking," only to realize three of them actually belong to a category about "words that start with a type of metal." It’s brutal.
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What’s Tripping Everyone Up Today?
The beauty of Connections is that it doesn't just test your vocabulary. It tests your ability to categorize the world in non-obvious ways. Today, the difficulty spike comes from the fact that several words could easily fit into three different groups. You see a word and your brain immediately goes to its most common definition. That’s exactly what the editors want you to do. To win, you have to look at the secondary or even tertiary meanings.
Think about the word "Lead." Is it a heavy metal? Is it the front of a race? Is it a leash for a dog? Or is it a verb meaning to guide? When a single word has that much flexibility, it becomes a landmine on the grid. Today's puzzle leans heavily into these homonyms and polysemous words. If you're stuck, stop looking for what the words are and start looking at what they can do.
Breaking Down the Difficulty Levels
NYT Connections uses a color-coded system to rank the categories. It’s not just for aesthetics.
The Yellow group is usually the "Straightforward" one. These are common associations. If the category is "Colors," you’ll see Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. Easy.
Green is slightly more abstract. It might be "Synonyms for 'Big'." Think Massive, Huge, Giant, Gargantuan. You have to think a little harder, but the logic is sound.
Then it gets weird. Blue often involves specialized knowledge or specific phrases. Maybe it’s "Parts of a Book" or "Legendary Jazz Musicians." If you don't know the niche, you're in trouble.
Finally, there’s Purple. Purple is the "Meta" category. This is where the editors get cheeky. These are often "Words that follow ____" or "Words that contain a hidden animal." Purple isn't about what the words mean; it’s about how they are structured or how they sound. It’s the category most people solve last by default—mostly because it’s nearly impossible to guess unless you’re a cryptic crossword pro.
Hints for NYT Connections Today: A Nudge in the Right Direction
If you want to solve this without just looking at the answers, I’ve got you. Let’s look at some thematic hints that might shake your brain loose.
The Yellow Hint
Look for words that describe a specific type of movement or a physical action. These are things you might do in a gym or perhaps while trying to get someone's attention. They are active, physical, and very literal. No metaphors here.
The Green Hint
This one is about "Groups." Not just any groups, but specifically how we organize people or things in a professional or social setting. If you were organizing a conference or a school, you would use these terms to divide the participants.
The Blue Hint
This is the "Synonym" group for today. Focus on the concept of "Nothing." Or, more accurately, something that is empty or lacking value. There are several words on the board that imply a void or a lack of substance. See if you can spot four of them that mean "Zero" in different contexts.
The Purple Hint
Look at the words and try saying them out loud. Do they sound like something else? Specifically, look for words that could be followed by a common household object or a piece of furniture. This is a "Word that comes before ____" situation.
How to Avoid the Red Herrings
The biggest mistake people make—and I do this constantly—is hitting "Submit" too fast. You see four words that relate to "Nature" and you click. Stop. Before you hit that button, look at the remaining twelve words. Is there a fifth word that also fits "Nature"? If there is, you haven't found the category yet. You’ve found the trap.
The NYT editors love to put five or six words of a single theme on the board. Your job is to figure out which four actually belong together and which two are decoys for a more difficult category. For example, if you see "Apple, Orange, Pear, Banana, and Phone," you might think "Fruit." But maybe Apple, Phone, Window, and Kindle are actually "Tech Brands."
The Evolution of the NYT Game Suite
It’s fascinating how Connections has filled the void left by the "post-Wordle" era. When Josh Wardle sold his creation to the Times for a seven-figure sum, people wondered if the "lightning in a bottle" could be captured again. Connections proved it could.
Unlike Wordle, which is a logic puzzle based on elimination, Connections is a linguistic puzzle based on lateral thinking. It feels more human. It feels more like a conversation. It’s also much harder to "cheat" at. You can’t just use a starting word like "ADIEU" and hope for the best. You have to actually know the nuances of the English language.
Experts like Krisztina Fruzsina, who studies game design and linguistics, often point out that these games work because they provide a "micro-flow" state. For two to five minutes, your entire world is just those sixteen words. It’s a meditative break from the doom-scrolling of modern life.
Why Some Days Feel "Unfair"
We've all had those days where the Purple category feels like a stretch. "Words that sound like Greek letters when you say them backward"? Come on.
But that's part of the charm. If it were easy every day, you wouldn't feel that rush of dopamine when the tiles flip over and turn purple. The "unfairness" is actually just a high ceiling for difficulty. It keeps the veteran players coming back. If you're struggling with the hints for NYT Connections today, remember that the game is designed to be a challenge. It's okay to fail.
Actually, failing at Connections is almost a rite of passage. Sharing your "grid of shame" (the one with all the grey X's) on social media is just as common as sharing a perfect win. It's a collective struggle.
Strategy: The "Wait and See" Method
If you're down to your last two mistakes and you're still staring at ten words, change your strategy. Don't guess. Walk away.
Seriously. Close the app. Go get a coffee. Your brain's "diffuse mode" of thinking is much better at solving word puzzles than your "focused mode." When you're staring intensely at the screen, you're using your prefrontal cortex to try and force a connection. When you walk away, your subconscious keeps chewing on the problem. You’ll be washing dishes or walking the dog, and suddenly—bam—you'll realize that "Squash" isn't a vegetable, it's a sport.
The Science of Word Association
Psychologically, our brains use "semantic networks" to store information. When you hear the word "Dog," your brain lights up nodes for "Bark," "Leash," "Bone," and "Golden Retriever."
Connections works by intentionally triggering those networks and then crossing the wires. It forces you to suppress your primary semantic network and look for a secondary one. This is actually a great exercise for cognitive flexibility. It’s essentially "brain gym."
Actionable Tips for Future Puzzles
If you want to get better at this, stop thinking like a dictionary and start thinking like a poet. Or a punster.
- Check for parts of speech. Are all the words verbs? If three are verbs and one is a noun that could be a verb, you’re on the right track.
- Look for compound words. Can you add a word to the beginning or end of these to make a new phrase? (e.g., "Fire" + Fly, Works, Drill, Ant).
- Identify the "Outlier." Find the weirdest word on the board. The one you’ve never heard of or that seems totally out of place. Usually, that word is the key to the hardest category. Work backward from there.
- Ignore the colors at first. Don't try to find the "Yellow" group first. Just find any group. Sometimes the Purple one jumps out at you because it’s so weird, and solving it early makes the rest of the board much easier.
- Use the Shuffle button. It’s there for a reason. Sometimes your eyes get stuck in a visual pattern based on where the words are placed. Shuffling the tiles breaks that pattern and lets you see new associations.
Today's puzzle is a reminder that language is messy and beautiful. Don't let a few red herrings ruin your morning. Take a breath, look at the hints for NYT Connections today one more time, and try to see the board from a different angle. You’ve got this.
To truly master Connections, start keeping a mental (or physical) note of the "types" of categories the NYT likes to use. They often repeat structures—like "Palindrome words" or "Names of 90s Sitcom characters"—even if the specific words change. The more you play, the more you’ll start to see the "Matrix" behind the grid.
Stop looking for definitions and start looking for patterns. The words are just symbols; the real game is the logic hidden beneath them.
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Step-by-Step Recovery for a Stuck Board
If you are currently looking at the screen and have no idea what to do next, follow this sequence. First, identify every word that has more than one meaning. If "Duck" is there, it's a bird and an action. Write down those secondary meanings. Next, look for any words that share a prefix or suffix. Finally, if you are down to your last guess, choose the four most "boring" words and see if they form the Yellow category. Often, we overthink the easy ones because we’re so worried about the traps.
Focus on the words that share a specific context, like "Things you find in a kitchen drawer" or "Types of insurance." If you can group even two words with 100% certainty, you've narrowed the field for the other fourteen.