NYT ‘Connections' Hints And Answers For Thursday, May 15
Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections.
Before we get to today's Connections hints and answers, here are Wednesday's:
Hey there, Connectors! I hope you're having a fantastic week.
Keep me in your thoughts. I'm in trouble. Yes, Fortnite has sunk its hooks into me again.
This happens for every few months. There will be a new addition or two that pulls me back in, I remember how fun the game is and I get deep into it again for a while. It was a combination of things this time around: a pair of recent emotes (a Chappell Roan 'Hot To Go' one from a couple of months ago, and a new one based on the dance for "Ratatata" by Babymetal and Electric Callboy) and the Star Wars-themed season.
I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, but the crossover is really well done. It's very cool to look up after a lightsaber or blaster battle to see a giant Death Star looking over the island. Plus it's really fun to do the 'Ratatata' dance after vanquishing an enemy team. There are a lot of reasons why Fortnite is one of the biggest games in the world, but the most important one is that it's an absolute blast.
Before we begin, we have a great little community on Discord, where we chat about NYT Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It's a fun hangout spot, and you're more than welcome to hang out with us.
FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™
Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase
Pinpoint By Linkedin
Guess The Category
Queens By Linkedin
Crown Each Region
Crossclimb By Linkedin
Unlock A Trivia Ladder
Discord is also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare (or not-so-rare) occasions that I mess something up. I don't look at the comments or Twitter much. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.
Today's NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, May 15 are coming right up.
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's 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 publication's 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 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.
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...
And the hints for today's Connections groups are:
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we're starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today's Connections groups are...
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...
Not quite a perfect game today, but that's a 79th straight win. I'm getting closer to the fabled hundo streak. Here's how I fared:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
"Real" came to mind as soon as I saw MADRID, so the purples were easy for me today. The Real World was a long-running MTV reality show and "real deal" is an expression referring to someone or something that is very good or totally authentic.
POWDER, GROUNDS and SLUSH seemed like they could go together, but I wasn't sure about a fourth word to go with those until I saw ICE. I figured they might be references to the type of snow that skiers use. Alas, I was one away from a group there. After stepping back for a minute, I realized than CRUST might make more sense than GROUNDS, and I had the greens.
At that point, the yellows became pretty clear, so I had to submit the blues first. I vaguely recognized them as references to an opera or play. I was on the right track, at least! Those left the yellows for the win.
The blues refer to Porgy and BESS (as best I can tell), Madame BUTTERFLY, The Magic FLUTE and The Barber of SEVILLE.
That's all there is to it for today's Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog tomorrow for hints and the solution for Friday's game if you need them.
P.S. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of Real Madrid. I prefer FC Barcelona (even though I enjoyed visiting Madrid more than I did Barcelona).
Still, Madrid have had incredible success and some absolutely sensational moments. The best of those, in my book, was in the 2002 Champions League final, when Zinedine Zidane scored this absolute stunner at Scotland's national football stadium, Hampden Park. Breathtaking technique on display here:
Speaking of which, one of the best days of my life occurred 15 years ago today at that same venue. I was there to see my team, Dundee United, beat Ross County 3-0 to win the Scottish Cup for only the second time in our history. For what it's worth, Harry Kane now has the same number of trophies in his career as one Garry Kenneth.
Anyway, here's a terrific song that's very popular among the United faithful:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!
Please follow my blog for more coverage of NYT Connections and other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
Wordle hint today: Clues for June 9 2025 NYT puzzle #1451
Wordle hint today: Clues for June 9 2025 NYT puzzle #1451 WARNING: THERE ARE WORDLE SPOILERS AHEAD! DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT THE JUNE 9, 2025 WORDLE ANSWER SPOILED FOR YOU. Ready? OK. We've seen some hard Wordle words over the years and if you're here, you're probably struggling with today's and are looking for some help. So let's run down a few clues with today's Wordle that could help you solve it: 1. It has two vowels. 2. It's a word that has a different definition when spelled differently. 3. It's associated with wood. And the answer to today's Wordle is below this photo: It's ... BOARD. While you're here, some more Wordle advice: How do I play Wordle? Go to this link from the New York Times and start guessing words. What are the best Wordle starting words? That's a topic we've covered a bunch here. According to the Times' WordleBot, the best starting word is: CRANE. Others that I've seen include ADIEU, STARE and ROAST. Play more word games Looking for more word games?
CNET
5 hours ago
- CNET
Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints, Answers for June 9 #259
Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. Atlantans, today's Connections: Sports Edition should be easy for you -- or at least the green group. Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That's a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn't show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic's own app. Or you can continue to play it free online. Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta Hints for today's Connections: Sports Edition groups Here are four hints for the groupings in today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group. Yellow group hint: Woo-hoo! Green group hint: Georgia's capital city. Blue group hint: Billie Jean King. Purple group hint: Little kids learn to draw these. Answers for today's Connections: Sports Edition groups Yellow group: Lively. Green group: An Atlanta athlete, past or present. Blue group: Names of women's tennis players. Purple group: Can be preceded by "line." Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words What are today's Connections: Sports Edition answers? The completed NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for June 9, 2025. NYT/Screenshot by CNET The yellow words in today's Connections The theme is lively. The four answers are animated, energetic, excited and spirited. The green words in today's Connections The theme is an Atlanta athlete, past or present. The four answers are Brave, Falcon, Hawk and Thrasher. The blue words in today's Connections The theme is names of women's tennis players. The four answers are Coco, Iga, Madison and Mirra. The purple words in today's Connections The theme is can be preceded by "line." The four answers are backer, man, score and up.
Engadget
8 hours ago
- Engadget
Everything new at Summer Game Fest 2025: Xbox handheld, Resident Evil Requiem and more
It's early June, which means it's time for a ton of video game events! Rising from the ashes of E3, Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest is now the premium gaming event of the year, just inching ahead of… Geoff Keighley's Game Awards in December. Unlike the show it replaced, Summer Game Fest is an egalitarian affair, spotlighting games from AAA developers and small indies across a diverse set of livestreams. SGF 2025 includes 15 individual events running from June 3-9 — you can find the full Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule here — and we're smack dab in the middle of that programming right now. We're covering SGF 2025 with a small team on the ground in LA and a far larger group of writers tuning in remotely to the various livestreams. Expect game previews, interviews and reactions to arrive over the coming days (the show's in-person component runs from Saturday-Monday), and a boatload of new trailers and release date announcements in between. Through it all, we're collating the biggest announcements right here, with links out to more in-depth coverage where we have it, in chronological order. Epic hitched its wagon to SGF this year, aligning its annual developer Unreal Fest conference, which last took place in the fall of 2024, with the consumer event. The conference was held in Orlando, Florida, from June 2-5, with well over a hundred developer sessions focused on Unreal Engine. The highlight was State of Unreal, which was the first event on the official Summer Game Fest schedule. Amid a bunch of very cool tech demos and announcements, we got some meaningful updates on Epic's own Fortnite and CD PROJEKT RED's upcoming The Witcher IV . To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The Witcher IV was first unveiled at The Game Awards last year, and we've heard very little about it since. At State of Unreal, we got a tech demo for Unreal Engine 5.6, played in real time on a base PS5. The roughly 10-minute slot featured a mix of gameplay and cinematics, and showed off a detailed, bustling world. Perhaps the technical highlight was Nanite Foliage, an extension of UE5's Nanite system for geometry that renders foliage without the level of detail pop-in that is perhaps the most widespread graphical aberration still plaguing games today. On the game side, we saw a town filled with hundreds of NPCs going about their business. The town itself wasn't quite on the scale of The Witcher III 's Novigrad City, but nonetheless felt alive in a way beyond anything the last game achieved. It's fair to say that Fortnite 's moment in the spotlight was… less impressive. Hot on the heels of smooshing a profane Darth Vader AI into the game, Epic announced that creators will be able to roll their own AI NPCs into the game later this year. Another company getting a headstart on proceedings was Sony, who threw its third State of Play of the year onto the Summer Game Fest schedule a couple days ahead of the opening night event. It was a packed stream by Sony's standards, with over 20 games and even a surprise hardware announcement. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The most time was given to Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls , a new PlayStation Studios tag fighter that fuses Marvel Superheroes with anime visuals. It's also 4 versus 4, which is wild. It's being developed by Arc System Works, the team perhaps best known for the Guilty Gear series. It's coming to PS5 and PC in 2026. Not-so-coincidentally, Sony also announced Project Defiant, a wireless fight stick that'll support PS5 and PC and arrive in… 2026. Elsewhere, we got a parade of release dates, with concrete dates for Sword of the Sea (August 19) Baby Steps (September 8) and Silent Hill f (September 25). We also got confirmation of that Final Fantasy Tactics remaster (coming September 30), an an all-new... let's call it aspirational "2026" date for Pragmata , which, if you're keeping score, was advertised alongside the launch of the PS5. Great going, Capcom! To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Rounding out the show was a bunch of smaller announcements. We heard about a new Nioh game, Nioh 3 , coming in 2026; Suda51's new weirdness Romeo is a Dead Man ; and Lumines Arise , a long-awaited return to the Lumines series from the developer behind Tetris Effect . There were absolutely no Summer Game Fest events scheduled on Thursday. We assume that's out of respect for antipodean trees, as June 5 was Arbor Day in New Zealand. (It's probably because everyone was playing Nintendo Switch 2.) It's fair to say that previous Summer Game Fest opening night streams have been… whelming at best. This year's showing was certainly an improvement, not least because there were exponentially fewer mobile game and MMO ads littering the presentation. Yes, folks tracking Gabe Newell's yacht were disappointed that Half-Life 3 didn't show up, and the Silksong crowd remains sad, alone and unloved, but there were nonetheless some huge announcements. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Perhaps the biggest of all was the "ninth" ( Zero and Code Veronica erasure is real) Resident Evil game. Resident Evil Requiem is said to be a tonal shift compared to the last game, Resident Evil Village . Here's hoping it reinvigorates the series in the same way Resident Evil VII did following the disappointing 6 . We also heard more from Sega studio Ryu Ga Gotoku about Project Century, which seems to be a 1943 take on the Yakuza series. It's now called Stranger Than Heaven , and there's a (literally) jazzy new trailer for your consideration. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Outside of those big swings, there were sequels to a bunch of mid-sized games, like Atomic Heart , Code Vein and Mortal Shell , and a spiritual sequel of sorts: Scott Pilgrim EX , a beat-em-up that takes the baton from the 2010 Ubisoft brawler Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game . There were countless other announcements at the show, including: As always, the kickoff show was followed by a Day of the Devs stream, which focused on smaller projects and indie games. You can watch the full stream here. Escape Academy has been firmly on our best couch co-op games list for some time, and now it's got a sequel on the way. Escape Academy 2: Back 2 School takes the same basic co-op escape room fun and expands on it, moving away from a level-select map screen and towards a fully 3D school campus for players to explore. So long as the puzzles themselves are as fun as the original, it seems like a winner. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Semblance studio Nyamakop is back with new jam called Relooted , a heist game with a unique twist. As in the real world, museums in the West are full of items plundered from African nations under colonialism. Unlike the real world, in Relooted the colonial powers have signed a treaty to return these items to their places of origin, but things aren't going to plan, as many artifacts are finding their way into private collections. It's your job to steal them back. The British Museum is quaking in its boots. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Here are some of the other games that caught our eye: To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. After Day of the Devs came Devolver. Its Summer Game Fest show was a little more muted than usual, focusing on a single game: Ball x Pit . It's the next game from Kenny Sun, an indie developer who previously made the sleeper hit Mr. Sun's Hatbox . Ball x Pit is being made by a team of more than half a dozen devs, in contrast to Sun's mostly solo prior works. It looks like an interesting mashup of Breakout and base-building mechanics, and there's a demo on Steam available right now. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Then came IOI, the makers of Hitman, who put together a classic E3-style cringefest, full of awkward pauses, ill-paced demos and repetitive trailers. Honestly, as someone who's been watching game company presentations for two decades or so, it was a nice moment of nostalgia. Away from the marvel of a presenter trying to cope with everything going wrong, the show did have some actual content, with an extended demo of the new James Bond-themed Hitman mission, an announcement that Hitman is coming to iOS and table tops, and a presentation on MindsEye , a game from former GTA producer Leslie Benzies that IOI is publishing. The Wholesome Direct arrived on Saturday, just in time to soothe that weird hangover we all got after the IOI showcase. The Wholesome Direct is a celebration of all things adorable, quaint, peaceful and sweet, and this year included mainstream news about Monument Valley 3 coming to consoles and PC, following a stint as a Netflix exclusive. There was also a release date announcement for the cozy but twisted shop-management sim Discounty , which is about as spooky as the Wholesome Direct ever gets. There's something sinister about the small town in Discounty , and while we're still not sure if it's demons or just the looming specter of capitalism, we know for sure the game is coming to PC, Switch, PS4, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 21. Meanwhile, Omelet You Cook hit Steam during the showcase as a nice little surprise. It's a game about making eggs for picky students in a cafeteria, and of course pleasing Principal Clucker (who is a chicken in a suit, yes). Simply put, it looks delicious. The final game we want to shout out from this year's Wholesome Direct is Camper Van: Make it Home , a perfect little crossover of interior design mechanics and slightly miniaturized objects, which makes for a super cute experience. It came out during the showcase , and it's live now on Steam. There were dozens of other announcements during the 2025 Wholesome Direct stream, and the entire thing is worth a watch. You can do so at your leisure, ideally cuddled up with a blanket and a nice drink, right here. Saturday was also the time for all of the hyper-specific game streams to shine. We saw the Women-led Games show, Latin American Games Showcase , Southeast Asian Games Showcase , Green Games Showcase and Frosty Games Fest . Party! The last big event of the weekend was Xbox, which had its usual breathless showcase. The major news, especially for a publication like Engadget, was the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, two new Xbox-focused PC handhelds. Internally, they're a lot like ASUS' ROG Ally handhelds, but the grips have been smoothed out to feel more like an Xbox controller in your hands. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The software experience is also different. The Xbox Ally handhelds run Windows 11, but in Microsoft's version of Steam Big Picture mode there'll be fewer background processes and… just a generally lower overhead compared to regular Windows handhelds. Thankfully, Microsoft isn't locking things down, as it'll be able to access other "popular storefronts," which we're taking to mean Steam and Epic. The Xbox Ally will be available closer to the holidays, but price is a huge question mark: The ROG Ally costs significantly more than the Steam Deck and Switch 2. Is Microsoft going to subsidize these things, or are they going to cost $600-$800 like ASUS' own-brand versions? Side note: A quick screw you to Microsoft for using Hollow Knight: Silksong to show off the new handheld. We're all starving out here, and this was not helpful. I guess the news that it'll be playable on day one on the handheld at least narrows down the release date to "between now and whenever this thing comes out." Less of a surprise was Outer Worlds 2 , which Microsoft said would be at the show well ahead of time. We got a release date — October 29 — and a deep dive into the game's new systems. It looks like an expanded title compared to the original, with an improved combat system and a more fleshed out set of companions. We hope to have more on what's new real soon. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The One More Thing of the show was a new Call of Duty game, Black Ops 7 . Truly, when a game comes out every year is it really worth blowing your one more thing on? If only Microsoft had an Xbox-branded handheld to show off, that would've been a really cool note to end the show! Here are the other bits and pieces worth reading about from the Xbox show: Paralives has been in the works for what feels like forever, but you'll be able to play it this year: It enters early access on December 8 . The indie take on The Sims looks charming as all hell in its latest trailer, and I can't wait. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Blippo+ has been a great distraction since it launched with Playdate season 2 , and we found out Sunday that it'll be coming to more platforms soon — in full color, no less ! It'll arrive on PC and Nintendo Switch in fall 2025. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Now you're all caught up. There's just one event on Monday, and it's the Black Voices in Gaming showcase. It starts at noon ET, and we've embedded the steam below for your viewing pleasure. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so.
