Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Thursday, November 14 (#522)

13 Nov 2024 by Kris Holt · Forbes

Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections.getty

Looking for Wednesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

Hey, folks! Happy Thursday. Hopefully things have been sailing as smoothly as possible for you so far this week.

By the by, I have been slowly setting up a Discord server for Connections fans to come together and chat about the game and this column — and let me know when I make an error or glaring typo — as well as anything else, within reason. I’ll soon start inviting those of you who said you were interested to join. It should be fun!

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, November 14, are coming right up.

How To Play Connections

Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.

Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are...

GRAIN
DRAIN
TOTAL
CUBE
SYRUP
SHRED
SIGNATURE
SAP
JAM
TAX
POWDER
ROCK
EMPTY
GROOVE
TIP
EXHAUST

And the hints for today’s groups are:

Yellow group — reduce over time
Green group — get into it on the stage or in the studio
Blue group — often seen after a tasty treat
Purple group — so sweet, The Archies sang about it twice

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s groups are...

Yellow group — deplete
Green group — play music with passion
Blue group — words on a restaurant receipt
Purple group — forms of sugar

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

Yellow group — deplete (DRAIN, EMPTY, EXHAUST, SAP)
Green group — play music with passion (GROOVE, JAM, ROCK, SHRED)
Blue group — words on a restaurant receipt (SIGNATURE, TAX, TIP, TOTAL)
Purple group — forms of sugar (CUBE, GRAIN, POWDER, SYRUP)

My first perfect game in a while brings me up to three straight wins. Here's how I fared:

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟪🟪🟪

A pretty straightforward game today, I reckon. I didn't really see any glaring red herrings, so I was able to crack on and complete all four groups in order in probably under a minute.

DRAIN and EMPTY gave me the yellows, while GROOVE and JAM led me to the greens. Seeing TAX and TIP next to each other then made the blues a cinch. That left the purples — for which I did figure out the connection — for victory.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Friday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I'm all but contractually obliged to go with this song for today's recommendation (just in case the purple clue wasn't clear enough for ya):

If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot!