About ConnectionsHintApp

Hi, I'm Vaibhav

I've been playing the NYT Connections puzzle every single day since 2023. It's the first thing I open with my morning coffee, and unknowingly this small passion of mine has become an uninterrupted streak that has been continuing for the past two years.

This site exists because of how I started. Read more about me and what else I do →

Why I started writing these hints

When I first got into Connections, I struggled. A lot.

Some days I'd stare at the grid and not even recognise a word's secondary meaning — I'd know SLUG as a garden pest but miss that it also means to punch someone hard. Some days I'd fall straight into the editor's trap: four words that looked like they belonged together because their surface meanings were so loud, and I'd burn a mistake before realising the real connection was somewhere else entirely. Some days I could see four words sitting in a group but couldn't figure out why — what thread the editor was actually pulling.

So I would look up a word in Google, and if that didn't work I'd navigate over to one of the hint sites — and in the end I'd always end up with the answers way sooner than I even wanted to know about them. The player in me wanted just the right amount of hints so that I could tease my brain a little longer into finding the subtle connection between the words in front of me, rather than a completely laid-out solution.

That in-between space — more than a vague teaser, less than a full spoiler — is what this site is built around.

What most hint sites get wrong

Most Connections hint sites are built for search engines first and players second. You can feel it the moment you land on one: a wall of SEO filler, the answer buried under six paragraphs about what Connections is (you're literally there because you already play it), and hints that are either so vague they're useless or so direct they ruin the puzzle.

The deeper problem is that they treat every reader as if they're stuck in the same way. They're not. Two people can land on the same hint page in completely different states of the puzzle:

• One player has guessed three groups and is staring at four leftover words, trying to figure out the theme.
• Another has no idea what half the words even mean.
• A third has spotted the theme but can't decide which of five candidate words belongs in it.
• A fourth has already lost and just wants to see the answers — and understand why those four were grouped together, so they learn something for tomorrow.

Giving all four of those players the same response — whether that's a vague clue or a full spoiler — fails three of them.

How I write the hints on this site

Every puzzle page on ConnectionsHintApp is built around one idea: you decide how much you want to see. Nothing is spoiled until you tap to reveal it.

Here's the structure I use for every daily puzzle, roughly in the order a stuck player would need them:

1. A verdict on difficulty. One or two lines at the top so you know what kind of day it is — easy Monday, devious Thursday, a theme-heavy Purple — before anything is spoiled.
2. The 16 words with tap-to-reveal meanings. If you're stuck because you don't know what a word means, or don't know its second meaning (the one the puzzle is actually using), tap the word. You get the nudge without seeing any group.
3. The traps and misdirects. The clusters of words that look like they belong together but don't. This is usually where most players lose a mistake. I call them out by name so you know what to avoid, without telling you the real answer.
4. Progressive hints for each category. Four tiers of reveal per group — a themed hint, a "Think:" nudge, the group name, and finally the four words themselves, revealed individually. You stop wherever you have enough to solve it yourself.
5. The full answers. For players who are out of mistakes, short on time, or just curious how it shook out.
6. Connections explained. A write-up of why each group works — the pun, the wordplay, the category logic. For the player who solved it and wants to appreciate the craft, and for the player who didn't and wants to get better for tomorrow.

Who this site is for

Streak-keepers. Morning solvers. People who want to stay in the puzzle rather than tab out of it. Whether you need one meaning of one word, or the full solution with an explanation of why the editor grouped them that way, the page is designed so you reveal only what you need — and no more.

I want every visit to feel worth it, regardless of how the puzzle went. Maybe you learned that SLUG can also mean a hard punch. Maybe you finally understood why MERCURY belongs with planets and not metals. Even on the days you tap "reveal all", you leave knowing something you didn't when you opened the grid.

That's the whole idea.