Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
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Looking for Friday’s NYT Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, gang! Welcome to the weekend. I hope it’s a great one for you, especially now that spring is finally here for those of us north of the equator.
I’ve been playing a few new games over the past couple of weeks, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows (you can read what I thought about that over at Engadget), MLB The Show 25 and Atomfall.
The last of those is a game in the vein of the Fallout series and it’s set in the north of England in an alternate version of the 1960s following a nuclear disaster. I was delighted to learn that you can have a cup of tea in the game. Everything might be falling apart around me, but give me a good cup of tea and, at least for a few minutes, all will be right in the world.
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.
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 Saturday, March 22, are coming right up.
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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…
- TOUCHDOWN
- TRIFLE
- TRILLION
- TROMBONE
- TRIDENT
- TRADEMARK
- THEREMIN
- TCHOTCHKE
- TRIANGLE
- TELEVISION
- TRINKET
- TRILOBITE
- TIMPANI
- THINGAMAJIG
- TAMBOURINE
- TUBERCULOSIS
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — noisemakers
- Green group — small objects that might be of little value
- Blue group — they lead with the magic number
- Purple group — you may not want to contract all of 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 — musical instruments
- Green group — knickknack
- Blue group — words with the prefix meaning “three”
- Purple group — words abbreviated with “T” + letter
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 — musical instruments (TAMBOURINE, THEREMIN, TIMPANI, TROMBONE)
- Green group — knickknack (TCHOTCHKE, THINGAMAJIG, TRIFLE, TRINKET)
- Blue group — words with the prefix meaning “three” (TRIANGLE, TRIDENT, TRILLION, TRILOBITE)
- Purple group — words abbreviated with “T” + letter (TELEVISION, TOUCHDOWN, TRADEMARK, TUBERCULOSIS)
Nice, a perfect game to kick off the weekend. That brings me up to 25 wins in a row. Only a week away from matching my personal best streak! Here’s how I fared:
I didn’t realize beforehand that this was game number 650. As with the 550th edition, there was a dash of trickiness here, but thankfully nothing like that earlier grid, which was filled with illustrations. This time, every word started with “T.” Fun!
(Also, we had T-SQUARE in the bottom right of the grid yesterday. That was a clever tease for today’s game.)
I got the yellows and greens in almost no time at all. While TRIANGLE could have gone with the musical instruments, it was the one that was most likely to slot into another group. TRIFLE gave me pause for a second, but it was the only word that made sense with the other greens.
It only took me a few moments to spot the “tri” words for the blues.
That left the purple group for an easy perfect game. I didn’t figure out the connection here, so I got this group by default. But hey, we take those.
The purples refer to TV (TELEVISION), TD (TOUCHDOWN), TM (TRADEMARK) and TB (TUBERCULOSIS).
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. This one came up in the Discord group recently and I’ve struggled to get it out of my head ever since. In truth, it’s been stuck in my head since 2000.
“Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus is such an infectious song. It’s fun to sing too:
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.
