Hints
Connections today swings between the classy and the goofy, which feels very on-brand for the New York Times in the best possible way. The four categories range from pretty straightforward word groupings to a couple that make you blink twice—especially once you notice the not-so-subtle butt theme and the odd “mustard” setup.
If you’re stuck, here are targeted hints for each group, from easiest to hardest:
Yellow (easiest): Not cake.
Green: Sit on it!
Blue: Think Wimbledon.
Purple (tough): Not ketchup.
And if you’re looking for outside-the-grid confirmation, the Connections bot and its scoring can be a fun way to sanity-check your picks once you’ve played the puzzle. (It’s also a handy option when you want help interpreting how your guesses fit the categories.)
Answers
Yellow group (Kinds of pies): chess, pecan, pumpkin, shoofly
Green group (Things associated with butts): caboose, can, moon, peach
Blue group (Tennis scoring terms): advantage, deuce, forty, love
Purple group (____ mustard): Colonel, honey, hot, yellow
One satisfying aspect of today’s puzzle is how each theme has a clear “entry point” once you latch onto it—pies for the yellow group, court-speak for blue, and the surprisingly extensive butt-adjacent language for green. If you got tripped up, try working backward: identify the one category that feels too specific to be random, then test whether the remaining words slot into it.
When you’re ready to compare your approach with what the puzzle expects, you can see your progress and results through the Connections game scoring.
Connections
Connections
Connections