Today’s Connections is one of those puzzles that starts out sounding familiar and then gets delightfully specific. You’ll be sorting words into four categories, and the trick is to catch the exact phrasing the NYT is looking for. The groups range from “you should’ve seen that coming” to the kind of purple answer that makes you think, wait—people really say that?
Hints
Yellow group (easiest): Think about a basketball mistake—something you can do even if you weren’t trying.
Green group: These are ways of expressing what someone believes, from formal to casual.
Blue group: A video-game theme tied to what gets measured and tracked as you play.
Purple group (hardest): Words that can follow “pop.” The set includes what Minnesotans (and others) call soda, plus a few extra “pop”-powered terms.
If you’re the type who likes puzzle solving help after a tough round, the Connections angle is especially useful for spotting how the NYT pairs words to create a consistent phrase. For additional spoilers strategy—like identifying the “template” behind each group—focus on the one word that “unlocks” multiple answers.
Answers
Yellow (basketball violation): carry, double dribble, goaltend, travel
Green (belief): attitude, mind, opinion, view
Blue (things tracked in video games): health, lives, score, time
Purple (words after “pop”): culture, fly, quiz, tart
One satisfying way to play these kinds of puzzles is to hunt for the “anchor word” that multiple answers share. Here, “pop” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in purple, while the green group gives you a semantic cluster you can recognize quickly once you commit to the belief/stance angle. That’s the whole game: match not just meaning, but the exact wording the Connections setter intends.
