Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Thursday, October 17

by · Forbes
Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections.getty

Looking for Wednesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

Hey, gang! I hope you’re having a wonderful week so far. I’ve been researching rowing machines, since the gym in my building doesn’t have one and I’ve enjoyed using them in the past — certainly more so than other gym equipment. I’m edging toward taking the plunge, so I may be spending many a winter night working out at home while catching up on movies.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers 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.

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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.

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...

  • PARK
  • CAR
  • HARVARD
  • YARD
  • ADDRESS
  • GREEN
  • JAW
  • LEMON
  • NATURAL
  • CRIMINAL
  • FIELD
  • SWINGER
  • HANDLE
  • GOODFELLA
  • ANSWER
  • LAWN

And the hints for today’s groups are:

  • Yellow group — public space filled with nature
  • Green group — sort out
  • Blue group — perhaps you enjoy these motion picture-
  • Purple group — Judge Dredd claims to be the thing that connects these

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s groups are...

  • Yellow group — grassy area
  • Green group — deal with
  • Blue group — movies with "S" removed
  • Purple group — ____ law

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 — grassy area (GREEN, LAWN, PARK, YARD)
  • Green group — deal with (ADDRESS, ANSWER, FIELD, HANDLE)
  • Blue group — movies with "S" removed (CAR, GOODFELLA, JAW, SWINGER)
  • Purple group — ____ law (CRIMINAL, HARVARD, LEMON, NATURAL)

A perfect game got me back to winning ways. Here's how I fared:

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟨🟨🟨🟨

I figured out the blues as soon as I spotted GOODFELLA, while seeing HANDLE and ANSWER next to each other made the greens clear enough. It was academic from there, as the yellows were fairly obvious. But I submitted the purple group before the yellows, just because I could.

I don't think I've ever heard of "lemon law" before, so I'm glad I got through things in the order I did.

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 Friday’s game if you need them.

P.S. Let's go with a double recommendation, only because I drafted the second one before playing today's game and seeing that JAWS was one of the words. It's horror movie season after all, and Jaws is an important one of those:

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This week, the Grammy nominee dropped a new synthpop song called "Crystallized" and I cannot get it out of my head. All four tracks that Poppy has released from her new album so far are great, and I can't wait to hear the whole thing next month. Negative Spaces may well turn out to be her best record yet: