Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Sunday, August 17th
Today’s Connections
Credit: NYT / Erik Kain
Looking for a little help with your Sunday Connections puzzle? The New York Times has set a pretty solid challenge with today’s puzzle, so if you’re looking for extra clues – or the answers – you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find an extra set of clues, the categories for each group and, finally, the solution to today’s puzzle.
Looking for Saturday’s Connections? You can find our guide right here.
New York Times Connections Guide Sunday August 10th
It’s another lovely weekend in August, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t itching for some cooler weather at this point. It’s been hot with nary a cloud in the sky, and all I’m asking for is a little rain. Or a lot of rain. Moisture of any kind would be lovely. Then again, in a few months when snow is piled high and it’s too cold to go outside, I’ll be pining for summer sun. We always want what we can’t have.
Be sure to check out my streaming guide if you’re looking for some new shows or movies to check out this weekend. There’s a lot of good stuff out at the beginning of the month.
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
Alright, Connectioneers, we have a Connections to solve, so let’s group some words!
How To Play Connections
Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.
The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.
There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.
You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints For Sunday, August 10th?
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:
- HANDY
- CLOSE
- PUSH
- NEARBY
- PETITION
- ENVELOPE
- NAME
- WELCOME
- ACCESSIBLE
- OPEN
- EXIT
- ADDRESS
- PRESS
- SPEECH
- STAMP
- ASSEMBLY
Hints for the Connections groups today are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Not far off.
- 🔵Blue group – Signs.
- 🟢Green group – My baby just wrote me one.
- 🟣Purple group – Rights.
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Conveniently located.
- 🔵Blue group – Words on a door.
- 🟢Green group – Needs for sending a letter.
- 🟣Purple group – First Amendment freedoms.
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Accessible, Close, Handy, Nearby
- 🔵Blue group – Exit, Open, Push, Welcome
- 🟢Green group – Address, Envelope, Name, Stamp
- 🟣Purple group – Assembly, Petition, Press, Speech
Today’s Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
I definitely had a hard time with this puzzle, using up three bad guesses in the process. Weirdly, I ended up solving it in reverse order, or at least the reverse of how I normally solve these. I got the purple group first, then the blue, then the green, then finally the yellow. I chock this up to my bad guesses, and how they clarified what I was actually looking for.
I was reasonably, but not entirely, sure that I was dealing with signs of some sort and things having to do with envelopes, but I also thought maybe some of the words were geared toward speeches or gatherings. With this in mind, I made a few wrong (but close!) guesses before I realized at least one group must have to do with freedom of speech, and that got me thinking about the First Amendment, which honestly we should always be thinking of in these censorious times.
That led me to ASSEMBLY, PETITION, PRESS and SPEECH and my first group. I was pretty sure that my hunch about signs was correct. I had guessed EXIT, OPEN and WELCOME were all part of this group but PUSH had eluded me before. Then that old Far Side comic popped into my head. The one where the guy is pushing on a door that says pull – and the sign above says “School for the gifted.”
From here, I turned to the idea of an envelope and got ADDRESS, STAMP, ENVELOPE and NAME. I was worried this was too literal in the beginning, and that ENVELOPE was actually the other use of the word, as in something that envelopes something else (though this is what an envelope does to a letter). That only left the yellow group: ACCESSIBLE (which I thought was a sign earlier) grouped with CLOSE, HANDY and NEARBY. All done, with just one guess to spare!
All told, a reasonably challenging puzzle! How did you do?
Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.