Looking for Sunday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
KA-BLAM! (Perhaps that helped sharpen your bleary eyes this Monday? I don’t know. I need to hydrate.)
Hi! Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend. Let’s have an even better week.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, November 18, 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 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…
- DOMINO
- DRYER
- FIDDLER
- LADYBUG
- INTERNET
- HORSESHOE
- SPIDER
- RENT
- HAIRSPRAY
- GAS
- DALMATIAN
- COMB
- PHONE
- HERMIT
- ROLLERS
- DIE
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — salon staples
- Green group —
- Blue group — like a cheetah or Appaloosa
- Purple group — shellshocked
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 — used in haircare
- Green group — monthly expenses
- Blue group — things with spots
- Purple group — ____ crab
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 — used in haircare (COMB, DRYER, HAIRSPRAY, ROLLERS)
- Green group — monthly expenses (GAS, INTERNET, PHONE, RENT)
- Blue group — things with spots (DALMATIAN, DIE, DOMINO, LADYBUG)
- Purple group — ____ crab (FIDDLER, HERMIT, HORSESHOE, SPIDER)
Not an incredibly difficult game today, but I got caught out by a red herring of sorts. In any case, that’s back-to-back wins on my record. Here’s how I fared:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟩🟪🟦
🟦🟩🟦🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟦
🟦🟩🟩🟩
I got the yellows quickly, then tried a guess of HORSESHOE, RENT, DIE and GAS — as in things you’d find in the board game Monopoly. But I was mistaken and a HORSESHOE isn’t one of the player tokens. Nonetheless, I got the greens next.
It was then much easier to spot the blues, but I submitted the purple group first, just because I could. And yes, I did figure out the purple connection.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Tuesday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I think I’m going to make it a thing to recommend a loud and energetic song every Monday. Something that can jive you a jolt and get you amped for the week ahead, without having to rely on coffee necessarily.
I really enjoyed the show Treme when I watched it some years back. This song featured in one of the episodes and it’s been ever-present in my life since then. I’m a firm believer that almost any song can be improved with a brass section and I do love brass bands. So crank this one up, dance along and start your week on a high note:
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!
