Looking for Friday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
My weekend often involves watching football (it is not called “soccer,” thank you very much), usually from the Premier League, Serie A and sometimes M.L.S., given the streaming services I use. My options for legally watching the Scottish Premiership here in Canada are, unfortunately, slim or very expensive.
In truth, I like most sports. Darts is usually fun to watch, and I can even stand an N.F.L. game from time to time. But there are a few I just can’t really watch at all. Cricket, for one, I’ve always found deathly dull. I could never get into rugby either (though I always want Scotland to do well in the Six Nations!).
I used to watch quite a bit of Formula 1 as well, but I can’t really do motorsports anymore. It doesn’t help that there’s an F1 race each year in my neck of the woods, and the city becomes very difficult to navigate for a few days. But, hey, if you like it, that’s great! I do appreciate that the sport is moving to more sustainable fuels.
Anyway, before we get going, 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 Saturday, January 25, 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…
- GINKGO
- SLOPE
- EMOJI
- ANGLE
- DENT
- TYCOON
- RECESS
- MOGUL
- LODGE
- LUNCH
- POD
- KARAOKE
- CLASS
- CYCLE
- LIFT
- HOMEROOM
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — parts of the day for kids (and some grown ups)
- Green group — aspects of an activity best enjoyed during winter
- Blue group — loanwords, perhaps
- Purple group — three, that’s the magic number
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 — school periods
- Green group — features of a ski resort
- Blue group — words derived from Japanese
- Purple group — words after the prefix “tri-“
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 — school periods (CLASS, HOMEROOM, LUNCH, RECESS)
- Green group — features of a ski resort (LIFT, LODGE, MOGUL, SLOPE)
- Blue group — words derived from Japanese (EMOJI, GINKGO, KARAOKE, TYCOON)
- Purple group — words after the prefix “tri-” (ANGLE, CYCLE, DENT, POD)
My overall win streak now stands at 13. Even better, I just logged my 10th straight perfect game. Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
A few possible red herrings, but I saw through the traps of MOGUL and TYCOON, and SLOPE and ANGLE quickly.
I remembered that MOGUL had something to to with skiing, so I was able to get the greens with no issues. I also knew that HOMEROOM has something to do with schools in the U.S. At my high school, we had a 10-minute period at the start of the day during which attendance was noted and we were given any necessary important information. This was just called registration or “reggie.”
I was pretty sure GINKGO (a word that was completely unfamiliar to me) had some kind of wordplay element going on. That became clearer as I looked at KARAOKE and EMOJI and realized those were Japanese in origin. I took a guess that TYCOON was the remaining word and I was correct.
I probably should have deduced the purple connection but alas. No matter. I’ll take a 10th straight perfect game.
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. Since I used “mull” in one of my clues yesterday, I’ve been listening to a lot of a Scottish band called Mull Historical Society. They’re not a group I think about very often these days, but they have some great songs. I really enjoyed seeing them live one time in… uh, a long time ago.
My favorite song of theirs is “Animal Cannabus.” It’s a real treat and the video’s a lot of fun:
Mull Historical Society’s best-known song might be “Watching Xanadu.” I dig that one as well:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! 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.
