If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Monday, September 25, 2023, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Beware, there are spoilers below for September 25, NYT Connections #106! Scroll to the end if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Connections game.
By the way, if you want an easy way to come back to our Connections hints every day, bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there as well, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle.
How to play Connections
I have a full guide to playing Connections, but here’s a refresher on the rules:
First, find the Connections game either on the New York Times website or in their Crossword app. You’ll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase. Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common. Often they are all the same type of thing (for example: RAIN, SLEET, HAIL, and SNOW are all types of wet weather) but sometimes there is wordplay involved (for example, BUCKET, GUEST, TOP TEN, and WISH are all types of lists: bucket list, guest list, and so on).
Select four items and hit the Submit button. If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed. (Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.) If your guess was incorrect, you’ll get a chance to try again.
You win when you’ve correctly identified all four groups. But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.
How to win Connections
The most important thing to know to win Connections is that the groupings are designed to be tricky. Expect to see overlapping groups. For example, one puzzle seemed to include six breakfast foods: BACON, EGG, PANCAKE, OMELET, WAFFLE, and CEREAL. But BACON turned out to be part of a group of painters along with CLOSE, MUNCH, and WHISTLER, and EGG was in a group of things that come by the dozen (along with JUROR, ROSE, and MONTH). So don’t hit “submit” until you’ve confirmed that your group of four contains only those four things.
If you’re stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to have no connection to the others. If all that comes to mind when you see WHISTLER is the painting nicknamed “Whistler’s Mother,” you might be on to something. When I solved that one, I ended up googling whether there was a painter named Close, because Close didn’t fit any of the obvious themes, either.
Another way to win when you’re stuck is, obviously, to read a few helpful hints. Below, I’ll give you some oblique hints at today’s Connections answers. And further down the page, I’ll reveal the themes and the answers. Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!
Does today’s Connections game require any special knowledge?
There are a few proper names that it would be helpful to recognize, and some oblique references to social media.
Hints for the themes in today’s Connections puzzle
Here are some spoiler-free hints for the groupings in today’s Connections:
- Yellow category – Your big day!
- Green category – Completely cased, cowled, and capped.
- Blue category – We’re missing a Skellington and a Sprat.
- Purple category – This is not what’s usually meant by last names…
Does today’s Connections game involve any wordplay?
There’s a category whose answers are incomplete—you’ll need to add something (different) to each of the words on the tiles to get the full words. Unlike a fill-in-the-blank, the thing you need to add is different for each of the four.
Ready to hear the answers? Keep scrolling if you want a little more help.
BEWARE: Spoilers follow for today’s Connections puzzle!
We’re about to give away some of the answers. Scroll slowly if you don’t want the whole thing spoiled. (The full solution is a bit further down.)
What are the ambiguous words in today’s Connections?
- MA can be a mother or grandmother, or a surname, as in cellist Yo-Yo Ma or business magnate Jack Ma.
- GRAM can be a measure of mass, or a bean or lentil. Gram flour usually refers to flour made from chickpeas, but note that this is spelled differently from Graham crackers. You also might call your grandmother your Gram. In any case, none of that will help you here. I can’t say what this is without giving away the category.
- A TRAIN refers metaphorically to any long tail, like the trailing fabric of a formal dress, or a series of cars pulled behind a locomotive. (Real Thomas the Tank Engine-heads will recall that not only is Thomas not a train—he is an engine, which is the British word for locomotive—there is a whole story in which he gets his first train. Before that, his job was moving cars around the railyard.)
- IN is a word that doesn’t do much by itself. That’s your last hint, okay? There are no synonyms for IN on this board.
What are the categories in today’s Connections?
- Yellow: BRIDAL ACCESSORIES
- Green: “C” WORDS FOR “ENVELOP”
- Blue: JACKS
- Purple: SOCIAL MEDIA APP ENDINGS
DOUBLE BEWARE: THE SOLUTION IS BELOW
Ready to learn the answers to today’s Connections puzzle? I give them all away below.
What are the yellow words in today’s Connections?
The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward. The theme for today’s yellow group is BRIDAL ACCESSORIES and the words are: BOUQUET, RING, TRAIN, VEIL.
What are the green words in today’s Connections?
The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest. The theme for today’s green category is “C” WORDS FOR “ENVELOP” and the words are: CAKE, COAT, COVER, CRUST.
What are the blue words in today’s Connections?
The blue grouping is the second-hardest. The theme for today’s blue category is JACKS and the words are: BLACK, FROST, MA, SPARROW.
What are the purple words in today’s Connections?
The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest. The theme for today’s purple category is SOCIAL MEDIA APP ENDINGS and the words are: BOOK, GRAM, IN, TUBE. (FaceBOOK, InstaGRAM, LinkedIN, YouTUBE.)
How I solved today’s Connections
Forget the wedding words, what’s up with SPARROW? No birds around, so it must be the pirate. Jack BLACK, Jack FROST, yes we’re getting somewhere! Jack MA? Yes, for some reason. That’s one fictional character, one actor, one metaphorical (maybe we could generously say mythical) and one…Alibaba founder?
COAT, COVER, CRUST, and VEIL stood out to me as coverings, but that was “one away.” So I went a different direction, and puzzled over GRAM a bit. There were no other measuring units, or alternative flours, and it’s not spelled like the cracker. All that was left was “the ’gram,” as in Instagram, and then I recognized the other partial names of social media networks: YouTUBE, FaceBOOK, and—with a little imagination—LinkedIN.
There were still too many wedding words to pin down a group, but then I thought of putting CAKE with the coatings. That was it, and I finally had my wedding words—BRIDAL ACCESSORIES, it turns out.
Connections
Puzzle #106
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