NYT ‘Connections’ Hints July 3: Clues and Answer for Game #388

Connections may only be a year old, but it has already taken the internet by storm.

The brainteaser was launched The New York Times in June of last year and quickly became the newspaper’s second-most-played game behind Wordle, another word-based puzzle.

If you’ve never played before, Connections challenges players to uncover threads connecting a series of words. Instructions on how to play the game are below. Clues and the answers for today’s puzzle are toward the end of the article.

How to Play ‘Connections’

Connections tasks players with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association. For example, Tuesday’s game linked the words “Squirrel,” “Stash,” “Store,” and “Stow” under the category “Pack Away for Future Use.”

Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies their difficulty level. Yellow is the easiest category, followed by green, blue and purple. However, the puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep players challenged.

Explaining why the game has four difficulty levels, the Times‘ puzzle editor Wyna Liu said she toyed with different ways to make Connections more of a challenge.

“There would have to be a mix of categories for the game to feel challenging and satisfying,” she said in the Times. “Some categories might be defined by their use of wordplay—palindromes, homophones, adding or dropping letters and words—rather than the literal meanings of the words on the cards.”

"Connections" hints and answers — A woman using her smartphone in New York City. “Connections” was launched by The New York Times in June 2023.

iStock/Getty Images Plus

However, the familiarity of the words used, and how often they pop up in modern life, are also difficulty factors, although less-common words aren’t only used in the harder categories. “Item overlap,” where one word can be linked to multiple categories, is another way Connections tests players.

“Caution was needed when including items that might stand out in the grid, since they would invite immediate scrutiny,” Liu explained.

The answers for today’s Connections puzzle will be revealed at the end of this article, so scroll with caution if you want to work them out yourself.