NYT Connections Hints, Answers For Friday, August 14

How To Play Connections

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!

After today’s Connections word list, I’ll give you a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll reveal the categories, followed by the full answers.

Got it? Cool.

Today’s 16 words are…

• BUMBLEBEE
• BUBBLE
• BASS ALE
• CHARLIE BROWN
• DELTA AIRLINES
• STRAIGHTEDGE
• ECHO CHAMBER
• CITGO
• CAUTION TAPE
• GOOGLE DRIVE
• INDIA INK
• SILO
• DIP PEN
• WOLVERINE
• HIVEMIND
• BRISTOL BOARD

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

The hints for today’s Connections categories are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — in hues associated with Wiz Khalifa
• 🟩 Green group — that’s one way to look at things
• 🟦 Blue group — the very foundations of the MCU
• 🟪 Purple group — like YouTube’s play button, Airbnb and a certain type of Swiss chocolate

One Answer For Each NYT Connections Group

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 — CAUTION TAPE
• 🟩 Green group — SILO
• 🟦 Blue group — DIP PEN
• 🟪 Purple group — DELTA AIRLINES

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are…

• 🟨 Yellow group — black-and-yellow
• 🟩 Green group — places where everyone thinks the same ways
• 🟦 Blue group — comic book artist’s tools
• 🟪 Purple group — triangle logos

Today’s NYT Connections Answer

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…

• 🟨 Yellow group — black-and-yellow (BUMBLEBEE, CAUTION TAPE, CHARLIE BROWN, WOLVERINE)
• 🟩 Green group — places where everyone thinks the same ways (BUBBLE, ECHO CHAMBER, HIVEMIND, SILO)
• 🟦 Blue group — comic book artist’s tools (BRISTOL BOARD, DIP PEN, INDIA INK, STRAIGHTEDGE)
• 🟪 Purple group — triangle logos (BASS ALE, CITGO, DELTA AIRLINES, GOOGLE DRIVE)

Tough one to end the week on! I got caught out by the red herring of things that start with words in the NATO alphabet. I made another randomish guess that didn’t help and wasted a life.

I then realized that CAUTION TAPE and BUMBLEBEE are both yellow. I didn’t clock the “black” aspect, but found the other two terms to round out the yellows.

The greens were up next after I realize the only other thing ECHO CHAMBER could really refer to.

I thought DIP PEN and INDIA INK made sense together as things ending with artistic factors. BRISTOL BOARD worked there. I thought DELTA AIR(LINES) would work too, but nope. I’m not sure what prompted me to swap in STRAIGHTEDGE, but that worked and I thankfully stayed alive.

The purples then wrapped things up. I am not familiar with BASS ALE or CITGO, so I didn’t figure out the category there.

Streak = 530.

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 chit chat to a close. I’ll be back with you for more here on Monday. In the meantime, you can read my weekend editions of this column and more of my writing at my newsletter, Pastimes.

P.S. Let’s wrap up our classic rock theme week with a song from one of the best ever to do it. “Go Your Own Way” is such a fascinating insight into the messy relationships between the members of Fleetwood Mac, since Lindsey Buckingham wrote it about his breakup with Stevie Nicks. I can’t imagine how awkward it must have felt for Nicks to hear Buckingham sing those lyrics and then join in with backing vocals. What a killer song, in any case:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!

Please follow my blog for more NYT Connections hints and help with other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. I’d really appreciate that as it helps me out. If you share this column with others who play Connections, that would be lovely too.