NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Sunday, August 9

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.

NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Saturday August 9

Below, we’ll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.

Here are today’s Connections words:

• corduroy
• recalibrate
• labyrinth
• spaghetti western
• jury duty
• goodnight moon
• shift gears
• buddy cop
• caps for sale
• escape room
• neo-noir
• change tack
• bad dream
• madeline
• space opera
• course-correct

Here’s an Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

• 🟡Yellow group – When you choose a new path.
• 🟢Green group – Similar to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
• 🔵Blue group – Also: Rom-Com, Mystery, Fantasy etc.
• 🟣Purple group – Places you don’t want to be.

One Word for Each Connections Group:

• 🟡Yellow group – Change Tack
• 🟢Green group – Goodnight Moon
• 🔵Blue group – Space Opera
• 🟣Purple group – Jury Duty

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

• Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
• 🟡Yellow group – Take A Different Approach
• 🟢Green group – Classic Children’s Books
• 🔵Blue group – Movie Subgenres
• 🟣Purple group – Things People Try To Get Out Of

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. The Connections answers are:
• 🟡Yellow group – change tack, course-correct, recalibrate, shift gears
• 🟢Green group – Caps for Sale, Corduroy, Goodnight Moon, Madeline
• 🔵Blue group – buddy cop, neo-noir, space opera, spaghetti western
• 🟣Purple group – bad dream, escape room, jury duty, labyrinth

Here’s the finished puzzle in the order I solved it:

Today’s NYT Connections is a 2/5 on the Connections Bot difficulty scale which feels about right to me. I suppose the red herrings were words like LABYRINTH which is both a movie and ostensibly one for children, so you get a little mixed up there with movie subgenres and children’s books.

People without kids might have a harder time on today’s puzzle, if they hadn’t spent many hours reading books like CORDUROY or GOODNIGHT MOON to the little ones. Then again, I’m a parent and had completely forgotten that CAPS FOR SALE is a kids book.

How’d you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Find more guides to Wordle, Pips and Strands on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Let me know if you have any fun puzzle games in your rotation that I should try on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Have a great Sunday!