Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections.
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 that we keep those Connections streaks intact before we get there.
Is there anything better than a public holiday falling on a Friday or Monday? A three-day weekend is pretty swell. I hope those of you in the U.S. who have the day off enjoy the long weekend.
There’s also a fun, thematic game of Connections on deck for us today. I’ve also got a very summery song recommendation for you from one of my current favorite pop singers.
Before we begin, 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.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, July 4 are coming right up.
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’s 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 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.
Today’s 16 words are...
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Let’s take a look at one word for each group.
Today’s Connections word hints are…
Today’s Connections groups are...
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...
Interesting grid today! I had no earthly idea what LANTHANUM was (hey, I didn’t take chemistry in high school), so I left that well alone. I can’t say I'm too surprised to see the four states and LOS ANGELES here given that it's July 4, but that quartet seemed like an obvious red herring. I was also intrigued to see FREUDIAN CONCEPT since we had a related group just a few days ago.
The latter was my way into today's puzzle after I clocked IDAHO. As such, I had the yellows. A DRIVER LICENSE can be a piece of identification or "ID", and to ID someone is to RECOGNIZE them.
The theme of today's game opened up for me after that. LOS ANGELES and LOUISIANA had to be "LA." MUSICAL NOTE (as in Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti or singing the "la la la" part of a song) made sense there, and LANTHANUM was the only other thing I thought worked. That got me the blues.
OKLAHOMA is abbreviated to OK, which is the name of a BRITISH MAGAZINE. MEDIOCRE and GREENLIGHT (i.e. to approve something) rounded out the purples.
That left the very TRENDY (or "in") greens for the win. Very fun game today. Every group was essentially a purple category in terms of difficulty. More of these, please!
A perfect game lifted my streak to a 129th win. Here is my grid for today:
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That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. I’ll be back with you all here on Monday. In the meantime, you can check out my weekend editions of this column in my newsletter, Pastimes.
P.S. A new flowerovlove song dropped a few days ago and as such I am obligated to recommend it. It’s another delightful slice of bedroom pop:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!
Please follow my blog for more coverage of NYT Connections and other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.