Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
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Looking for Friday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Today: Hints And Answers For Friday, February 7By Kris HoltHey there, gang! Welcome to the weekend. I hope you have a wonderful one.
I’ve been reminiscing about my trip to Japan five years ago. My partner at the time and I spent almost a month there, bookended by stays in Tokyo.
One of my biggest regrets from the trip relates to the first few days, during which we stayed in Akihabara. The neighborhood is renowned for (among other things) being a haven for video game fans and geek culture at large. But we didn’t really check out the area at all.
Our hotel was in a good location for getting around Tokyo – it was very close to the metro station. But we didn’t spend much time in Akihabara otherwise. I’m still annoyed that I didn’t explore the area. I need to make amends for that sometime.
Before we begin, I’ve set up a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat about each game (and other topics) with me and other folks. I’m always interested to find out how other people approach the game, so join us! It’s fun.
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Saturday, February 8, are coming right up.
How To Play Connections
Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.
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 my hints for each grid via 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.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
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.
Today’s 16 words are…
- FAST
- BUNCH
- TEAM
- PLAYER
- SOUL
- STAT
- SOON
- RUFFLE
- LATER
- GATHER
- BIO
- FINGER
- NOW
- JUNK
- THEN
- PUCKER
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — key information on a sports collectible
- Green group — just a little wrinkle
- Blue group — at some point
- Purple group — don’t expect Joey Tribbiani to offer you any of his
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today’s Connections groups are…
- Yellow group — info on a baseball card
- Green group — scrunch, as fabric
- Blue group — time adverbs
- Purple group — ____ food
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
- Yellow group — info on a baseball card (BIO, PLAYER, STAT, TEAM)
- Green group — scrunch, as fabric (BUNCH, GATHER, PUCKER, RUFFLE)
- Blue group — time adverbs (LATER, NOW, SOON, THEN)
- Purple group — ____ food (FAST, FINGER, JUNK, SOUL)
Back-to-back wins for me, but no perfect game today. Here’s how I fared:
🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟨🟩🟩 🟩🟨🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
STAT, FAST and SOON could have had the makings of a red herring, but I side-stepped that by getting the blues pretty much right away. I didn’t really see where to go from there, though.
This was one of those days where I had to stop looking at my screen for a while. Just take a break and come back to the grid later.
When I returned, I tried PUCKER, GATHER, RUFFLE and TEAM as in a group of “____ up” words. I was one away from a group. I then swapped BUNCH in for PUCKER, and then PUCKER back in for RUFFLE to no avail. Dang, three lives lost.
Thankfully, I quickly spotted the purples on the smaller grid (mmm, SOUL food). I think the clue is the first Friends reference I’ve ever made in this column.
I should have deduced the yellows much earlier than I did but hey, that’s the way the game goes sometimes. I would have understood it as sports-related information more generally, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baseball card in person.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog tomorrow for hints and the solution for Sunday’s game if you need them.
P.S. Looking back through my previous recommendations (I should have tracked these in a spreadsheet, but alas!), I realized that I’ve only ever included one Jimmy Eat World song. Two, if you count a chill acoustic cover. They’re a brilliant band, so let’s right that wrong to some extent.
Bleed American is the band’s quintessential album, but I dig the follow-up record, Futures, a whole lot too. The first single from that was a track called “Pain.” It’s a humdinger in my book:
I like the other two singles from that album as well, so here are “Work” and “Futures.” Don’t say I’m not good to you:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
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