If you are struggling to win today’s Connections puzzle, you might need a little helping hand to get you the rest of the way there. Today’s puzzle felt quite difficult to me, as there were a lot of different things going on, and I couldn’t figure out quite what was going on in the beginning. If you paid more attention than I did, you might have had a better experience. If not, I have the clues you need now to finish the puzzle anyway.

If you want something else to test your thinking skills today, the NYT’s Letter Boxed puzzle is one of the best ones to try. It involves a fair amount of complex thinking, but not necessarily any more difficult than the other puzzles. It just forces you to think about the words in a different way, following them around the edge of the box and slowly getting used to connecting multiple words in that manner. Once you learn the rhythm, you will be solving puzzles left, right, and center.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

MARCH 02 #630

If you are looking for some clues, you are in the right place. This puzzle has a number of categories that are not definition-based, and if you don’t recognize what the context clues are standing for it is hard to get the rest of the categories correct. The purple category is pretty typical, but getting there is hard if you cannot get the earlier categories first. I think this one is potentially a little easier, but only if you are more familiar with the words than I am.

• One category is about different ways to operate a device in your pocket
• One category is about four different ways to get away from something
• One category is about four words that can all be represented in the same way
• One category is about four words that come before a different word in a phrase – that word is something you might find on a sweater

Related

NYT Mini Crossword: 8 Strategies To Solve It Fast

This tricky little five by five crossword isn’t always as easy as it looks; here are a couple easy tips and tricks to beat your friends’ times!

If you still need help on this puzzle, there are more hints and answers to be had. Start with the category names and end with the spoilers.

	CELLPHONE MODES
	EVADE
	WHAT “W” MIGHT STAND FOR
	___STRING

Today’s Connections Answers

MARCH 02 #630

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

This one I felt a bit silly about missing the first time, and I was a little embarrassed about it. DO NOT DISTURB is a big clue, but I think what threw me off was AIRPLANE. None of the others usually come with “mode” on the end in the same literal way, but AIRPLANE usually does. It’s a silly reason to miss out on this category on the first pass, but it is what it is. For some reason, I also really wanted VIBRATE to go with HEART, on the basis that they were both rhythmic.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

This was the category I got pretty quickly. However, there was a trick to it, as there were words like WIN, SHOE, and RING, each of which has a meaning that could put it in this category. DRAW could also go in here, as many of these words could go together as they could all be related to card games. So there were a lot of potential tricks here, but I got it on the second try. I was a little worried it would be wrong again, and I was wrong later about a different category, but not this one.

Related

8 NYT Tiles Strategies To Score Huge Combos

The Tiles game for the New York Times mobile app asks you to use various strategies to pair matching visual patterns together to build huge combos.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

This one I just didn’t even think about too much, but I did keep looking at WATT and thinking it had something to do with measurement. I was partially right, as it is a measurement, but I didn’t see the rest of these words as something that could be abbreviated as a “W.” It was a little unfortunate, but I wasn’t too sad about it. After the last time I lost my streak, it couldn’t hurt me that much. At one point, I was thinking that all those words started with a “w” but when there wasn’t a 4th one, I gave up on the idea.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

I felt quite close on this one, but my brain was not thinking about any of these as compound words or phrases. That’s likely because I wanted both SHOE and DRAW to go elsewhere, so I didn’t have those as potential words down here. Otherwise, I was very confused about HAM and HEART, but they are both meat in some way, so I did see that but didn’t know where else to go with it.

Other Games Like Connections

If you want to try another game, I’d recommend checking out Worldle.

Released

June 12, 2023

Developer(s)

The New York Times Company

Publisher(s)

The New York Times Company

ESRB

e

Platform(s)

Web Browser, Mobile