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Each day's game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before we get to today's Connections hints and answers, here are Thursday's:
Hey there, Connectors! The weekend is almost upon us, but let's make sure we keep your Connections streaks intact before we get there.
A Reddit thread I saw this week posed the question of who is the most famous person you've ever met. I have met quite a few in both personal and professional environments, from sharing an elevator with Jimmy Carr to having a chat with Dan Harmon soon after he was fired from Community. The first name that sprang to my mind, though, was Kiefer Sutherland.
I have a big list of shows and movies I want to watch before I cancel my various annual streaming service plans (I have wayyyy too many on the go). I'm planning to write about some of those too. However, that Reddit thread got stuck in my head. And so I found myself starting my fifth rewatch of 24 the other night. Alas.
We have a great little community on Discord, where we chat about NYT Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It's a fun hangout spot, and you're more than welcome to hang out with us.
Discord is also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare (or not-so-rare) occasions that I mess something up. I don't look at the comments or Twitter much. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.
You're presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.
There's only one solution for each puzzle, and you'll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.
Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you're incorrect, you'll lose a life. If you're close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you're one word away from getting it right, but you'll still need to figure out which one to swap.
If you make four mistakes, it's game over. Let's make sure that doesn't happen with the help of some hints, and, if you're really struggling, today's Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it's easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.
If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the publication's Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.
Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find our hints Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.
Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today's Connections groups, I'll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.
The top line got a laugh out of me. It appeared to reference Han Solo being frozen in carbonite.
Anyway, MING was a bit of a giveaway for the purples, especially with HAN on the grid. SOLO, SINGLE and STAG helped me get the greens. Not sure I’d equate FREE with the rest of those, though! (I couldn’t resist that hint after it popped into my head.)
With STAG out of the way, a fifth option for what turned out to be the blues was eliminated, so that was another group taken care of. That left the yellows for win number 189 in a row. Here’s my grid for today:
P.S. I really don’t know why this song popped into my head, but it’s an all-time classic, so it’s going to be today’s recommendation. Have a great weekend, folks:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!