Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
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Each day’s game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before your NYT Connections hints today, here’s what you missed on Thursday:
Hey there, Connectors! If you’re relaxing today as part of a long weekend, scouring Black Friday deals for a bargain or just having a regular day, I hope you’re doing well and you have a smile on your face and hope in your heart.
Something that made me smile this week was some very fun news on the live music front for me. The revived Vans Warped Tour is coming back to town for the first time in 12 years.
I’ve never been to a previous edition of this festival, which showcases a variety of artists across the spectrum of rock, punk, rap, emo, hardcore and ska. This is the kind of music I grew up listening to. The lineup won’t be announced for a while (Turnstile would be a cool headliner!), but I already have my ticket. You’re only as young as you feel, after all.
Before we start, I want to mention the great community we have on Discord, where we chat about Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. It’s a lovely, welcoming group of folks. I like to call it our cozy little corner of the internet. You’re more than welcome to join us. Don’t be shy!
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, November 28 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.
NYT Connections Hints – Today’s 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…
- BEST
- STRING
- JUST
- INTONATION
- STRESS
- FAIR
- FRET
- BEAT
- RHYTHM
- TAKE
- RIGHT
- PEG
- PROPER
- PICKUP
- LOUDNESS
- WORST
NYT Connections Hints
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- 🟨 Yellow group — appropriate, suitable
- 🟩 Green group — overcome the odds or live up to a billing as the favorite
- 🟦 Blue group — elements of strats, flying Vs and Les Pauls
- 🟪 Purple group — what a stage performer might be concerned with
NYT Connections Hints – 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 — RIGHT
- 🟩 Green group — TAKE
- 🟦 Blue group — FRET
- 🟪 Purple group — RHYTHM
NYT Connections Hints – Groups/Categories
Today’s Connections groups are…
- 🟨 Yellow group — fitting
- 🟩 Green group — achieve victory over
- 🟦 Blue group — parts of an electric guitar
- 🟪 Purple group — phonetic elements of speech
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…
- 🟨 Yellow group — fitting (FAIR, JUST, PROPER, RIGHT)
- 🟩 Green group — achieve victory over (BEAT, BEST, TAKE, WORST)
- 🟦 Blue group — parts of an electric guitar (FRET, PEG, PICKUP, STRING)
- 🟪 Purple group — phonetic elements of speech (INTONATION, LOUDNESS, RHYTHM, STRESS)
This was one of those games in which everything fell into place very quickly. As a lapsed (and extremely mediocre) guitar player who’d like to get back into the instrument, the blues were no problem at all for me this time.
The yellows were up next, and it sure would be nice if the world were like this for everyone.
INTONATION and STRESS opened up the purples for me. I thought those were pretty straightforward. That left the greens. I pretty much had the connection figured out, but I wasn’t sure how WORST made sense there.
In any case, that’s my 272nd win in a row. How did you get on today? Here’s my grid:
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
Alas, I don’t have time to put together a separate Answers Explained column today, folks, as much as I’d like to nerd out about guitar minutiae.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. I’ll be back here on Monday for another weekday run of this column that I adore so much. In the meantime, you can read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.
P.S. Logic might dictate that I offer up a punk or ska song as your recommendation given today’s intro, but I’m not going to do that. I like to keep you all on your toes a bit! Instead, we’re going to go with an all-time favorite song of mine that popped up on my ridiculously huge playlist the other day.
I love the story behind “Man on the Moon” by R.E.M. The track was otherwise finished, but singer Michael Stipe had trouble finding the lyrics for it.
After trying (and failing) to convince his bandmates that the song should be an instrumental, Stipe listened to the track on a Walkman as he strolled around Seattle on the last day of the recording sessions for Automatic for the People. He was inspired to make it a song about Andy Kaufman.
Stipe returned to the studio, recorded his vocals and the song was mixed that night. It’s one of his best vocal performances, for my money.
Incredibly, he pulled it off in one attempt. “When we reconvened, Michael walked into the studio, sang, ‘Man On The Moon’ once, and walked out,” guitarist Peter Buck said. “We were all stunned. It was one of those magic moments I’ll remember long after the award ceremonies and the photo sessions have disappeared into the mists of time.”
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. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.
