It’s time to play today’s New York Times Connections puzzle! If you’ve already opened it and can’t seem to guess any groups, I promise you’re not the only one. I have good news though: we’ve got hints (and spoilers if you want them) to help you get through Thursday’s puzzle: #788. Don’t feel bad for taking a peek — no one wants to lose their winning streak.
Since we’re in this together, I’ll share how I did each day. This puzzle was somehow easy for me today, thanks to quickly catching on to yellow and blue. Would I have ever guessed purple? Nope.
If you’re new to NYT Connections, we’ve got some tips to help you along the way. Also, check out today’s Wordle hints and answer.
How to play NYT Connections
NYT Connections is a surprisingly difficult word game and if you play, you’re now considered a “connector.” There are 16 words presented in a four-by-four grid and your goal is to match four words into their respective color-coded groups (yellow, green, blue, purple). Yellow is the easiest to guess while purple is the hardest.
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Your job is to find out how the four words are connected to a specific group. For instance, in one recent puzzle, the blue group hint was “related to buying a home” and the words were appraisal, escrow, insurance and mortgage.
If you make a mistake when you submit, that’s okay. You get four guesses before the game is over and the answers are revealed. You can also click on the lightbulb icon in the game to get some hints, but we’ll also provide those here.
If you find yourself obsessed with this game after completing just one puzzle, I’ve got bad news for you. You can only play once a day. The timer resets each night at midnight.
Tips for playing NYT Connections
I only recently started playing Connections, but here are some tips I’ve found useful along the way.
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1. When you get an answer wrong, pay attention to the text that appears at the top of the puzzle. “One away” means you only got one word wrong. Analyze each word to find one that might fit better in another group and try a new word.
2. If you’re stuck, shuffle the board. You can shuffle as many times as you’d like to help you see some different word combinations.
3. Try to find the easy yellow group words first. Those words usually stick out because they have so much in common — they’re often synonyms of one another. But be wary of the trick words that could fit into multiple categories.
4. Stumped? Come back to the puzzle later with a fresher mind. Trying to solve a difficult puzzle without “sleeping” on it might result in too many mistakes.
Today’s NYT Connections hints
Check out these hints if you’re having a hard time grouping them together.
I’ll give you my own hints:
Yellow group: Things you do on your computer
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Green group: Make a hole
Blue group: Characters with something in common
Purple group: Tennis players
Here’s one word from each group:
Yellow group hint word: Click
Green group hint word: Poke
Blue group hint word: Vulcan
Purple group hint word: Graf
Okay, on to the official group names for a bigger hint. If you don’t want to know what those are, then stop scrolling.
NYT Connections group names
Here are the group names for today’s puzzle.
Yellow group: Mouse actions
Green group: Perforate
Blue group: Ones with pointy ears
Purple group: Wimbledon winners
Warning, spoilers ahead! If you scroll past this, the answers are right below.
Final warning! Last chance to go back and finish the game.
Today’s NYT Connections answers (spoilers)
Here are the Connections groups and the words that go with them.
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Yellow group: Mouse actions (click, drag, hover, scroll)
Green group: Perforate (bore, pierce, poke, punch)
Blue group: Ones with pointy ears (Batman, devil, elf, Vulcan)
Purple group: Wimbledon winners (borg, graf, king, sinner)
My results today
Today’s puzzle wasn’t so bad today. When I guessed blue, I definitely wasn’t thinking “oh, they have pointy ears in common!” Again, purple was last but I don’t think I could’ve guessed it had I not solved the others.
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Thanks for reading! Share how you did today in the comments.




