Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
getty
Looking for Sunday’s NYT Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, gang! Happy Monday. Welcome to the start of a new week.
At this point, you know what that means: on Mondays, we kick off the column with an upbeat song to help start your week on a positive note and maybe even get you dancing a little.
I feel like everyone has a different favorite Lionel Ritchie song. For me, it’s the very fluffy but incredibly catchy “Dancing On The Ceiling” and that’s what I’m going with today. It’s so much fun:
Before we begin, I’ve set up a discussion group for NYT Connections and this column on Discord. We have a great little community over there and we chat about more than NYT games. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot.
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up since I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, March 24, 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 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…
- MATURE
- EARTH
- UNIFORM
- RANK
- LEVEL
- RIPE
- PHOTOSHOP
- EVERYONE
- HENHOUSE
- STABLE
- TEEN
- ONION
- FOUL
- ADULTS ONLY
- CONSTANT
- SOUR
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — well, that stinks
- Green group — steady
- Blue group — making sure things are audience-appropriate
- Purple group — it’s just one thing after another with these
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 — bad-smelling
- Green group — unfluctuating
- Blue group — who video games are for, per ESRB ratings
- Purple group — things with layers
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 — bad-smelling (FOUL, RANK, RIPE, SOUR)
- Green group — unfluctuating (CONSTANT, LEVEL, STABLE, UNIFORM)
- Blue group — who video games are for, per ESRB ratings (ADULTS ONLY, EVERYONE, MATURE, TEEN)
- Purple group — things with layers (EARTH, HENHOUSE, ONION, PHOTOSHOP)
No perfect game, but my streak is up to 27 wins. Getting closer to matching my personal best tally! Here’s how I fared:
First of all, there’s nothing filthy about today’s game. Behave yourselves. You know who I’m talking to.
I had a feeling it probably wouldn’t be a group but I tried a guess of UNIFORM, PHOTOSHOP, EVERYONE and HENHOUSE anyway. I figured those all seemed like two words that were smushed together, but I wasn’t even one away from a group there.
Anyway, I also had the yellows on my radar and I squared those away. The blues then made sense to me next. I thought they’d be more generic age ratings, but sure, that works (and brings to mind a recent controversy over the brilliant poker-like game Balatro).
The ESRB (or Entertainment Software Rating Board) is a self-regulatory industry board that determines age ratings for games in the US, Canada and North America. This group is perhaps not common knowledge, but I think it’s one that many people might get to logically (although MATURE also could have gone with some of the yellows for a red herring).
Despite what this group might imply, video games are absolutely for everyone — I’m always happy to offer suggestions if you want to start dipping your toes into that world!
From there, the greens jumped out like a sore thumb, but I had to submit the purple group first. I didn’t quite figure out the connection here though I suppose it makes sense. I maybe could have gotten there even with my very limited knowledge of PHOTOSHOP, but I had no idea a HENHOUSE had layers!
Oh, a thought…
It might be referring to hens laying eggs. In other words, the hens are the LAYERS.
Well played, NYT. Well played.
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 Tuesday’s game if you need them.
P.S. Even though I had two such tracks in mind, I don’t quite think a lower-tempo song is right for a Monday — especially given that I tried to help put a smile on your face and get you moving with the song in the intro. So, let’s go with all-time rock classic to close things out today.
I recently found this 1978 live performance of “Baba O’Riley” by The Who on the band’s official YouTube channel. Even though this was shot in the ’70s, the visual quality is astonishingly good. It must have been shot on film cameras rather than video.
Anyway, I love this song to bits. Glad I was able to see The Who live before they got (too) old. There were drunken youths everywhere at that festival. A teenage wasteland, indeed:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
If you’re so inclined, 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 Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.
