Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
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Looking for Tuesday’s NYT Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Today: Hints And Answers For Tuesday, March 11By Kris HoltIt’s Wednesday, and you know what that means: it’s time for another round of Connections!
I hope you’re all doing well out there. It seems like we’re constantly living in unprecedented times. It would be very nice to have some precented times again, even just for a little while. But I at least hope that today’s Connections game offers you a little respite from everything else that’s going on.
Before we begin, I’ve set up a discussion group for NYT Connections and this column on Discord. We have a great little community over there and we chat about more than NYT games. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot.
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up since I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, March 12, 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…
- ORANGE
- KETCHUP
- ELMO
- COTTON
- SUGAR
- EYE
- ROSE
- MONTH
- EGGS
- ROCK
- PURPLE
- BUTTER
- FLOUR
- CARDINAL
- JOHN
- SILVER
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — bake ’em into a sweet treat
- Green group — like a fire truck or paprika
- Blue group — these sound like nothing else (probably)
- Purple group — don’t say the name of this “man” five times in front of a mirror
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 — ingredients in classic pound cake
- Green group — things that are red
- Blue group — words said to have no exact rhymes
- Purple group — _____ candy
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 — ingredients in classic pound cake (BUTTER, EGGS, FLOUR, SUGAR)
- Green group — things that are red (CARDINAL, ELMO, KETCHUP, ROSE)
- Blue group — words said to have no exact rhymes (MONTH, ORANGE, PURPLE, SILVER)
- Purple group — _____ candy (COTTON, EYE, JOHN, ROCK)
Phew! My streak extended to 15 wins but only just! Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟪🟪🟦 🟦🟪🟪🟦 🟦🟪🟦🟪 🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
A very colorful grid today, so to speak. I dug the Long JOHN SILVER reference at the bottom too.
Despite the risk that it was a red herring, owing to the colors that were named elsewhere on the grid, the greens jumped out at me right away. That gamble paid off, which is good, because I would have had no idea what else ELMO would go with.
The yellows were pretty clear and up next, though I’d wager you could say that those are ingredients in most types of cake.
But I had no idea about the blues and purples. Nothing about the construction of the words gelled together, no abstract link I considered between anything made sense.
After hitting the shuffle button a few times I just had to take a deep breath and go for it. I selected the four words I had on the left — EYE, COTTON, ORANGE and SILVER (in the first and second columns) — and didn’t get the “one away” prompt. That meant I had two blues and two purples in there.
Same deal with EYE, ORANGE, PURPLE and ROCK (columns one and three), and then EYE, ORANGE, JOHN and MOUTH (columns one and four).
If I were a more logical thinker, I could probably extrapolate some more useful information from those guesses other than that EYE and ORANGE definitely didn’t go together. In hindsight, I probably should have made the last of those three guesses columns two and four — COTTON, SILVER, JOHN and MONTH. I’ll remember that the next time I try this strategy.
Still, nothing clicked, but I got extremely lucky with a guess of COTTON, EYE (eye candy is a phrase meaning “something nice to look at”), JOHN (as in the late, great actor John Candy) and ROCK. Those gave me the purples. Of course they’re linked by candy. Of course.
The blue connection still didn’t become apparent until after I submitted the group. ORANGE was the big clue there, I wager, but I don’t think I would have figured that group out.
I’m glad to keep my streak alive, but it was a close one!
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 Thursday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I’m a big fan of Limmy, a Scottish comedian and streamer. He never fails to make me laugh, whether it’s because of his TV show or clips of his Twitch stream. He reminds me of my homeland. You might know him as the “steel is heavier than feathers” guy.
Seeing PURPLE on today’s grid made me think of the clip of him proving that some Scottish people can’t say the phrase “purple burglar alarm.” I can’t say it either:
For today’s actual recommendation, here’s one of my favorite sketches from Limmy’s Show, in which Limmy plays a talk show host who claims to be able to talk to the dead:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
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