Each day’s game of Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before today’s Connections hints, here’s what you missed on Thursday:
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Hey there, Connectors! The weekend is agonizingly close. Let’s make sure you reach it with your Connections streak intact.
My Canada Day was a very weird and unfortunate one. My building’s fire alarm went off four times in a span of about six hours, which totally disrupted my day. After the last one, I decided I needed a little pick-me-up, so ventured to a pub for a while.
When I got home, the fire alarm business seemed to be all handled. However, I had another problem to deal with as the heat pump in my apartment was leaking. Pretty unfortunate thing to happen during a heatwave! I mopped up all the water I could find and I’ll have to get my landlord or building manager to check it out (and fix something else I’ve been meaning to get them to look at).
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What a day. I think I deserve a week off to recover from all of that.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, July 3 are coming right up. Let’s get rolling!
NYT Connections – How To Play
Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT’s website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.
Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don’t know how they hit together or what the category for each group is: that’s what you have to figure out.
There’s only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it’s game over.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by blue, green and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs – part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.
As with Wordle and similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.
Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow – correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.
Today’s NYT Connections Word List
Scroll slowly! I’ll first give you a list of today’s words, then a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll tell you the category names, followed by the full answers.
Today’s 16 words are…
- HOT DRINK
- RUNAROUND
- FELICITY
- SHIRT
- WARM FUZZIES
- GOSSIP
- COOL BEANS
- DIRTY LOOK
- COLD SHOULDER
- HAPPINESS
- RIGHT ON
- HARD TIME
- FAR OUT
- GOLF ACCESSORY
- BLISS
- GROOVY
Today’s NYT Connections Hints
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- 🟩 Green group — sure thing
- 🟦 Blue group — like food poisoning and the tape from The Ring
- 🟪 Purple group — dinner in the UK, true and a bell-shaped probability distribution could fit in here
NYT Connections – One Answer Per Group
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Let’s take a look at one answer for each group.
Here we go…
- 🟨 Yellow group — HAPPINESS
- 🟩 Green group — COOL BEANS
- 🟦 Blue group — HARD TIME
- 🟪 Purple group — GOSSIP
Today’s NYT Connections Categories
Today’s Connections groups are…
- 🟨 Yellow group — positive feelings
- 🟩 Green group — retro expressions of approval
- 🟦 Blue group — bad things to give someone
- 🟪 Purple group — what things pronounced “T” might refer to
Today’s NYT 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 last chance to look away.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
The first thing I had to do with this grid was figure out what GOLF ACCESSORY could refer to. It couldn’t be ball or club since those are essential pieces of equipment. I suppose a tee would be as well, but that’s where I landed on, which helped me figure out the purples.
The greens were up next. No problem there. I wasn’t sure where FELICITY might fit, but after realizing how the blues slotted together, it didn’t matter. That’s win 488 in a row pour moi.
How did you get on this time? Here’s my grid:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
Want to know more about how everything fits together? Let’s explore today’s game in more depth in my NYT Connections Answers Explained column. You can check that out by visiting my author page.
That brings my current weekday run of Connections hints and answers to a close. I’ll be back with you for more on Monday. In the meantime, you can read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.
P.S. Since it’s properly summer in the northern hemisphere now, let’s go with an S-tier summer song today. It’s “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins. I guess I think of this as a summer track because of the music video. But it’s pretty fantastic no matter when you listen to it:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!
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