Note: Make sure to complete today’s NYT Connections before reading further! We’ll be getting into spoilers for today’s game pretty quickly. If you need some help to complete the grid, you can find my NYT Connections hints and answers column for today right here:
Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to my deeper dive into today’s Connections answers. The idea behind this is to help clear things up for anyone who isn’t sure how today’s groups fit together.
If I’ve missed any red herrings or misunderstood something, let me know via email or on Discord. I don’t typically look at X or check the comments here.
I’m going to assume that you’ve already beaten today’s game. We’re going straight into spoiler territory here. So, consider this your one and only warning.
Here are today’s NYT Connections answers explained (and any red herrings I spot) for Monday, May 18:
Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained
Connections – Yellow Group
🟨 homophones (PAIR, PARE, PEAR, PÈRE)
Straightforward enough. Spoken aloud, these all sound like PAIR. And also PARE.
Somehow, PEAR sounds the same too. And so does PÈRE!
Connections – Green Group
🟩 rupture (BLOW, CRACK, POP, SPLIT)
These are just synonyms. Nothing much more to spell out here!
Connections – Blue Group
🟦 MLB player (PADRE, RED, ROYAL, TWIN)
These refer to:
- San Diego PADREs
- Cincinnati REDs
- Kansas City ROYALs
- Minnesota TWINs
Connections – Purple Group
🟪 fruit anagrams (CHEAP, EARP, LUMP, WIKI)
These are referring to:
- CHEAP > peach
- EARP > pear
- LUMP > plum
- WIKI > kiwi
Connections – Red Herrings
POP, PADRE and PÈRE are all words that mean “father.” (I don’t think there were any others on the grid?)
EARP, PEAR and PARE are all anagrams as well. Those gave me pause as I looked for a fourth one. PADRE was close!
I also thought it was a little sneaky to have PEAR (itself an anagram of EARP) on a grid that features a fruit anagram category.
If you’d like to chat about today’s game of Connections and just about anything else with me and a very lovely group of people, you can do just that in our Discord community. We’d love for you to hang out with us.
I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes.