'NYT Connections': Hints and Answers for July 16

Instead of squandering countless hours on unproductive social media apps, a much more rewarding way to spend your time is by engaging with NYT games. While Twitter still serves as an essential tool for staying updated on news, especially for work-related purposes, it’s beneficial to limit your time on social media apps, regardless of how connected you feel to them, whether it's Instagram or Twitter. Reducing your reliance on these platforms can have a positive impact on your mental well-being.

NYT games offer an intellectually stimulating alternative that not only provides entertainment but also engages your mind in a productive way. By solving puzzles and challenging yourself with different games, you can foster a sense of achievement and satisfaction that mindless scrolling through social media cannot offer

How to Play Connections?

Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words. Your goal is to organize these words into four groups of four by identifying the links between them. The groups can be based on themes such as horror movie franchises, types of verbs, rappers, or players.

Each puzzle has only one correct solution, so you need to be cautious with words that could fit into multiple categories. You can shuffle the words to help you spot connections more easily.

The groups are color-coded: yellow is typically the easiest to identify, blue and green are of medium difficulty, and purple is usually the hardest, often involving wordplay.

To play, select four words you believe belong together and press Submit. If your guess is incorrect, you lose a life. If you're close, you might see a hint indicating you’re one word away from the correct group, but you’ll need to figure out the correct swap. Four mistakes end the game. Let’s avoid that with some hints, and if you’re really stuck, here are the answers for today’s Connections puzzle.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

The group categories and the clues for today's Connections groups are shown below, without disclosing which words go with which right away.

Today's 16 words are:

• KINKY
• TRIAL
• PIPER
• FIDDLER
• TESTY
• EXPLORATORY
• MERRILY
• SURLY
• PAN
• PILOT
• SHORT
• RABBIT
• CROSS
• PARKER
• PRELIMINARY
• JERSEY

Hints for today’s groups:

• Yellow group: negative feelings
• Green group: test
• Blue group: known words of Times Square
• Purple group: surname

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Today’s groups are:

Yellow group — in a bad mood

Green group: experimental

Blue Group: The starts of Broadway musicals

Purple group: Peter ____

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don't read further unless you’re ready to see today’s Connections answers.

Today’s Connections answers are:

• Yellow group: feeling irritable (CROSS, SHORT, SURLY, TESTY)
• Green group: refers to experiments (EXPLORATORY, PILOT, PRELIMINARY, TRIAL).
• Blue group: opening titles of Broadway musicals (FIDDLER, JERSEY, KINKY, MERRILY)
• Purple group: Peter ______ (PAN, PARKER, PIPER, RABBIT)

For me, recognizing PAN and PARKER helped quickly identify the purple group due to familiar movie names and characters. TRIAL and PILOT guided me to figure out the green group. I struggled a bit with the remaining groups but managed to sort out the yellow group, leading me to the final purple group for the win.

That’s it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check the hints and solutions for Wednesday’s game if you need them.