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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's what you missed on Sunday:
Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to the start of a new week! I'm very happy to be back with you for another Monday-Friday run of this lil' column.
If you're joining us for the first time, welcome! I hope to see you again soon. I like to kick off the Monday editions with a fun, upbeat song to hopefully get you moving around and maybe even shake off a cobweb or two.
I'm in the mood for a little bit of Northern soul and rock and roll. "A Town Called Malice" by The Jam juxtaposes the reality of working-class life in 1980s Britain with a very danceable, Motown-inspired track. I find it quite optimistic, as the author clearly believes he can escape to a new life:
Anyway, before we start, I want to mention the great community we have on Discord, where we chat about Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. It's a fun hangout spot, and you're welcome to hang out with us.
Discord is also the best way to give me feedback about the column. I don't look at the comments or Twitter much. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.
Today's NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, September 22 are coming right up.
Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT's website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.
Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don't know how they hit together or what the category for each group is: that's what you have to figure out.
There's only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it's game over.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by blue, green and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs - part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.
As with Wordle and similar games, it's easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.
Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow - correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.
Scroll slowly! I'll first give you a list of today's words, then a hint for each category. After that, I'll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I'll tell you the category names, followed by the full answers.
Since we had a group of black-and-white things very recently, I was fairly sure that CROSSWORD, ORCA, OREO and DOMINO would be a red herring. Still, curiosity often gets the best of me, so I had to try it. Imagine my surprise that those turned out to be the greens. Huh.
From there, the yellows were easy enough. Saying the rest of the words out loud made the purples clear - Rs (ARS), Is (AYES), Es (EASE) and Os (OWES). That left the blues for the win. I didn't figure out the connection there.
Hey now, that's win 206 in a row after a perfect game. Here's my grid for today:
P.S. I have a new obsession and it's one that's probably going to wreck my YouTube recommendations for months. Last week I learned that competitive window tinting is a thing. There are world championships for it and everything.
I've spent a bit of time watching videos of this stuff over the last few days. I just really enjoy watching people who are incredibly skilled at what they do for a living do their thing. I find it quite calming to watch despite the high-stakes nature of a competition with tens of thousands of dollars on the line:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!