Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
Looking for Thursday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there, Connectors (I’m sticking with it)! The weekend is almost upon us.
Earlier this week, I went to a Franz Ferdinand show. I’ve seen them many times over the years and they’re always incredibly fun (“Do You Want To” is a better and more danceable song than “Take Me Out,” don’t @ me).
After I saw them in my hometown a certain number of years ago, I posted a tweet about how much I enjoyed the show. The next morning, frontman Alex Kapranos sent me a direct message to tell me he appreciated my praise.
I appreciated his appreciation. It was such a nice little gesture. It only took him a few seconds to compose and send, but I still remember it over a decade later. Just like that time Duncan Jones tried to help me figure out screening times for Moon when I wasn’t able to do so on my work computer.
Going even just a little out of your way to do something that can brighten up a stranger’s day can have an immense, positive, long-lasting impact. I’m a Franz Ferdinand fan for life.
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.
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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 Friday, April 18, 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…
- GOOD
- BOY
- BANJO
- BIRDS
- NOSE
- MAN
- POSSESSION
- GOODNESS
- BELONGING
- HAUNTING
- APPLE
- CARD
- SHINING
- EFFECT
- WOW
- EXORCIST
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — things you might say when you’re surprised
- Green group — like ring and host
- Blue group — flower and pocket would fit in here
- Purple group — your tuff
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 — interjections
- Green group — horror movies, with “the”
- Blue group — things you can pick
- Purple group — personal property minus “s”
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 — interjections (BOY, GOODNESS, MAN, WOW)
- Green group — horror movies, with “the” (BIRDS, EXORCIST, HAUNTING, SHINING)
- Blue group — things you can pick (APPLE, BANJO, CARD, NOSE)
- Purple group — personal property minus “s” (BELONGING, EFFECT, GOOD, POSSESSION)
Yet another perfect game brings me up to 52 victories in a row! Let’s keep that going. Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
At first, I thought there might be a group of words with two sets of double letters – POSSESSION, GOODNESS, EFFECT and SHINING – but there were more than four of those on the grid!
I also didn’t think that we’d have a group of horror movies, since we had one pretty recently that included SHINING, if I recall correctly. But still, I took a stab with that, HAUNTING, EXORCIST and BIRDS. That turned out to be the greens.
The yellows then became clear. Oh boy, halfway there!
BELONGING and POSSESSION clearly had to go together at that point. GOOD and EFFECT were their obvious partners. I figures that had to be the blues and there was something trickier going on with the other group so I submitted that first.
But no, “things you can pick” turned out to be the blues. That’s a weirdly easy purple group today. I’m sure, because of that, Saturday’s purple group will be something like the first four hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone.
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 Saturday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I’ve loved We Are Scientists for a long time. That first album is fantastic and they’ve put out some great stuff since then.
A buddy of mine sent over their latest song and video, “Please Don’t Say It,” and needless to say, I’m into this. As tends to be the case with this band, the song is a typically enjoyable slice of indie rock with a fun video. I hope you dig it too:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
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