Looking for Sunday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! I hope you have an excellent first full week of the year. You’ve got this.
One of the things I’m planning to do this year is to keep better tabs on the things I’m watching, reading, listening to and playing. I’ve been meaning to start organizing more of the things I do in my life in Notion, so that might be the way to go, but for now at least I’ve started making a note of everything in Google Sheets. The spreadsheet already has three Balatro sessions logged.
Speaking of which, I recently published my list of my top 20 games of 2024. I think there’s a little something for everyone in there, so you might find something fun to play by yourself or with family and friends:
Before we get started, I’ve started a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat about each game (and other topics) with me and other folks. I’m always interested to find out how other people approach the game, so join us! It’s fun.
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, January 6, 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 for each grid 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…
- BLANKET
- BOOT
- BREEZE
- RUM
- PICNIC
- PANT
- UMBRELLA
- PIE
- HEAVE
- ARS
- ABC
- GENERAL
- BROAD
- GASP
- BUT
- PUFF
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — wheeze, become winded
- Green group — the overall picture
- Blue group — no sweat
- Purple group — smaller seats
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 — breathe hard
- Green group — catchall
- Blue group — metaphors for easy things
- Purple group — synonyms for rear end minus last 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 — breathe hard (GASP, HEAVE, PANT, PUFF)
- Green group — catchall (BLANKET, BROAD, GENERAL, UMBRELLA)
- Blue group — metaphors for easy things (ABC, BREEZE, PICNIC, PIE)
- Purple group — synonyms for rear end minus last letter (ARS, BOOT, BUT, RUM)
Butt (I’m sorry) for a silly mistake, I would have had a perfect game today. Still, I’m happy about getting back-to-back wins. Here’s how I fared:
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟪🟨🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
The blues jumped out at me as soon as I saw ABC. They all relate to expressions such as “easy as PIE,” “easy as ABC” and so on.
I wasn’t sure about where to go next, so I went with a guess of BLANKET, PANT, UMBRELLA and BOOT as in items of clothing or accessories. That was a wasteful gambit, especially because the yellows became apparent immediately afterward.
With the smaller grid, the greens then became clear. That left the purples, for which I did not clock the connection, for the win. I’ll be honest, the first thing that came to mind when I saw ARS was the football (not soccer) team Arsenal, so I wasn’t too far away, though I assumed that would have been one of the purple words.
Anyway, those refer to ARSe, BOOTy, BUTt and RUMp. It says a lot about our society that we have so many words for that particular part of the body.
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. My gut instinct was to go with Rihanna’s “Umbrella” as today’s recommendation given that it’s a great song, but, uh, I’m not especially inclined to share a song that features Jay-Z at the minute.
So let’s instead run with another fitting song in the form of a true ‘90s classic, “Baby Got Back.” Sure, it’s raunchy and can be understood as an objectification of the female form, but many critical readings see it as a celebration of body positivity and a rejection of certain beauty ideals. I’m firmly in the latter camp, so I can enjoy this without reservation:
Have a great day! Make sure to drink enough water! Call someone you love!
If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.
