
NYT ‘Connections' Hints For Friday, May 30: Clues And Answers For Today's Game
Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections.
Each day's game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. As such, 'today's Connections hints and answers' depend on where you are in the world. In case you need them, here are the Connections hints and answers for Thursday:
Hey there, Connectors! The weekend is almost upon us, which is cause for celebration or relief for many. Maybe a little less so for those who work weekends (I see you out there).
I am not a parent, but my partner is and she has primary responsibility for her little one. We have plans to move in together when the three of us are ready for that step, but in the meantime I think it's important for me and her almost-five-year-old to spend more time together and get to know each other more. Her dad's still very much in the picture (he and I get along well), but if me, my partner and her daughter do live together, I'll be helping to raise the kiddo to a certain extent.
That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I want, first and foremost, to make sure I'm playing a supporting role there, helping to raise the little troublemaker in line with her parents' wishes. But there's a lot I can help her discover.
I mean, she's probably a little young to grasp the concept and power of compound interest or understand the reasons for geopolitical tensions between so many countries. That'll come in time. But I'm looking forward to opening her mind to more art and books and music and films and games and science and so much of the other cool stuff that the world has to offer.
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
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.
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 Friday, May 30 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...
That's a 94rd win in a row. And hey, I got the reverse rainbow! Here's how I fared:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
This was the second day in a row where I found everything pretty straightforward. RADIO and SHAKE were my entry points for the purples.
Caddyshack is a famous comedy film from the '80s, while 'Love Shack' is a fantastic song from the same decade by The B-52's. RadioShack is an electronics retail chain in the U.S. and Shake Shack is a fast casual restaurant chain that serves tasty food.
WATER BOTTLE made the blues pretty clear to me after that. At that point, the yellows seemed obvious, but I slid through the greens first (but not before figuring out the link between them).
That's all there is to it for today's Connections clues and answers. I'll be back with you all here on Monday. In the meantime, you can check out my weekend editions of this column in my newsletter, Pastimes.
P.S. If not for our ska punk theme week, today's song would have obviously been "Love Shack." But I have to stick to my plan here.
One of the first ska punk songs that really landed for me was "All My Best Friends Are Metalheads" by Less Than Jake. I saw the band at a festival when I was a teenager and had a great time.
I recently found a video on YouTube of a different performance from that festival that shows me fairly clearly right at the barrier (and no, I won't tell you where to find it). Zero chance you'll find me at that place at a big show these days. I'm quite content to enjoy the show from afar:
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 newsletter, Pastimes.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Vogue
26 minutes ago
- Vogue
Dance Aerobics is So Deeply Uncool…And That's Why I Love It
There are people out there who will tell you that you should never do any form of physical activity that you don't enjoy. While I respect and admire their commitment to approaching exercise with zeal, I have to ask: how? I genuinely love various forms of exercise (which, at the moment, include mat Pilates, swimming laps, going for long walks with my dog, and weeding crabgrass at the community garden), but I've come to think of them as a kind of deposit in my future-happiness account; I know movement will eventually make me feel great, especially now that I'm no longer working out in a constant quest to lose weight, but in the actual moment of moving—and, even more so, the moment before a workout class when I have to squeeze myself into a sports bra and actually get out the door—I'm often full of dread. This was true, at least, until I attended my first 'fiercely noncompetitive dance aerobics' class at Pony Sweat, a studio based in my hometown of L.A.'s Frogtown neighborhood that describes its practice as feeling like 'dancing in your bedroom to music from a favorite mixtape.' Terrible dancer that I am (unless I've had two to four martinis, in which case all bets are off), I felt nervous and typically dread-filled even stepping through the door of the Pony Sweat studio, but the moment the lights dimmed and the music started, something weird happened: I forgot to feel stupid. I don't know exactly what it was about Pony Sweat that got me out of my shell and happily dancing around to combinations I'd never seen or tried before, but I'm guessing it was a combination of the gloriously retro '80s soundtrack, the unbridled enthusiasm of the dancers around me (many of whom, like me, weren't perfectly on-beat and didn't seem to have any prior familiarity with the workout), and the instructor, Emilia, shouting what I'm now turning into a kind of exercise mantra: 'Fuck the moves.' I ended the hour-long class with sore calves and an exhausted glow, driving home as fast as I could to gush about Pony Sweat to my boyfriend and pre-book my best friend to attend the next week's class with me—and although I might have expected to feel good after the class, what really surprised me was how much fun I had during and how little clock-watching I did as I bopped around. There are definitely workouts I've enjoyed in which knowing exactly what you're doing matters—weight lifting, for instance, sort of depends on your ability to listen to instructions and not accidentally injure yourself with something heavy—but the loosey-goosey, 'do what feels fun' approach of Pony Sweat really speaks to me right now as a 31-year-old doing my best to get comfortable being bad at things. I've always resented the aspects of life that are hard for me (math, cleaning, driving, the list goes on), but exercise is a low-key, low-stakes way to lean into the question of what my time and my life would look like if I reframed my idea of perfection and focused instead on trying to have genuine fun while also meeting my bodily movement goals.


Forbes
27 minutes ago
- Forbes
NBA Finals: Look Beyond TV Ratings For Keys To Success
The National Basketball Association Finals have arrived, and you know what that means for the media coverage – a lot of headlines about TV ratings. Embittered New York Knicks fans are already preparing their collective 'I told you so' with the likelihood of historically low ratings between two small TV market teams, the Oklahoma City Thunder (47th ranked market) and the Indiana Pacers (from the 25th ranked market and the team that defeated the Knicks). But for the NBA, its business partners and even for the folks at ABC and ESPN who are broadcasting the Finals, focusing so heavily on TV ratings is just so 1990s. There is a much more complex tableaux of media measurement metrics that are ultimately far more relevant to business success and failure here. Yes, the NBA Finals TV ratings will likely be low by any historical standard. In addition to the presence of small-market teams, the Finals matchup lacks marquee franchise names like the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. And there is no larger-than-life superstar like LeBron James or Michael Jordan, but how many of those are there? It's true that NBA ratings have been falling for years. Last year's NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks averaged 11.3 million viewers, down 27% from 2014 (LeBron James was playing in those), and down 37% from 2004 (with the Lakers and Kobe Bryant). The ratings for the NBA playoffs are actually slightly up this year compared to a year ago. But more broadly, the entire TV ratings universe has fallen 54% in the last 10 years. 'Linear TV' – broadcast and cable – now accounts for less than 50% of all the video viewing in the U.S. Is any of this breaking news anymore? Can we broaden our lens a bit in analyzing success and failure? Most importantly for the solidity of the NBA's future as well as its present is the new media rights deal it announced last July which is going into effect next season. The NBA closed an 11-year, $76 billion agreement for national TV and streaming distribution with Disney (ESPN and ABC), NBCUniversal (including Peacock) and Amazon. That's a dollar amount three times larger than the deal the NBA signed with Turner Networks (now part of Warner Bros. Discovery) and Disney nine years ago. None of the new and returning media partners were unaware of the ratings environment when they signed on the dotted line. As the NBA's SVP for Partnerships, Lauren Sullivan, told me in the midst of busy Finals prep, the new deal will bring 40% more nationally televised games during the regular season, including weekly national prime time broadcasts on NBC on Tuesday and Sunday nights, as well as a massive increase in nationally streamed games via Peacock and Amazon. There's little or no ability to predict the future path of ratings, but in a world of future ratings blindness, the one-eyed live sports broadcast remains King. This enhanced distribution helps drive awareness and fan engagement throughout the year, not just during the Finals. Sullivan emphasized throughout the course of our discussion of the NBA Finals that the league's approach to marketing demands '365-day planning and storytelling [with an] Partnerships have to work for all. NBA team marketing sponsorship revenues topped $1.6 billion last year, and marketers and media partners get access to the breadth of the NBA fan base especially its highly engaged younger audiences, which aren't easy to reach anymore on linear TV broadcasts. Marketers with ongoing NBA partnerships, including through the Finals, include Puma, Michelob Ultra and YouTube TV. The metrics around social media fan engagement are increasingly critical, as both Sullivan as well as the NBA's SVP for Digital and Social Content Bob Carney pointed out to me. According to Carney, the NBA works with 'an unbelievably rich community' comprised of the league, broadcast partners like ESPN, digital and social media partners such as Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, individual media talent and a huge creator community that the NBA has cultivated over the course of the last decade. As Carney pointed out, the NBA social content strategy leans heavily into its Instagram account (with its 90 million followers), and Sullivan proudly trumpeted the league's 'takeover' of Instagram's own Instagram account (that's a thing) which has over 700 million followers. Video highlights are a huge part of the NBA's content strategy given that social media algorithms are driven by the amount of time spent with videos, and the NBA is constantly looking to create stories with its players, teams and marketing partners that will drive extended video viewing. One of the immediate winners in the NBA Finals marketing sweepstakes is Converse which has hit the jackpot with its celebrity endorser, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ('SGA'), the NBA's new MVP and the star of the Finals-playing Thunder, a deal in play long before the Finals. In case you haven't heard much of him, SGA leads all NBA players in social media engagement in these playoffs with 864 million views. You can add in fellow shoe brand Puma (leaning into the now-laughable designation of Pacers' star Tyrese Haliburton as 'overrated" by his fellow players). Halliburton, that 'overrated' guy, is third in social media playoff views with 679 million. Needless to say, partnerships with these stars aren't going to live or die on TV ratings. Yeah, but it's still two small market teams playing in the Finals, right? Carney almost laughed at the notion that young audiences, especially internationally, particularly care about the market size of the NBA Finalists. The Finals will be distributed in 214 countries and territories in 60 languages, with 'NBA House' live fan events in Brazil, Canada, Mexico and India, and official viewing parties in China, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It's all part of the league's long-term strategy of expanding its global footprint. For those still fixated on the U.S. linear TV ratings, you need to get your eye on the bouncing ball.


CNN
27 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump's autopen fixation, explained
President Donald Trump first focused on Joe Biden's use of the autopen in March, leaning into the idea that the former president's use of the tool to sign documents showed that he wasn't in charge while in the White House and that his actions were 'null and void.' At the time, conservative executive authority scholar John Yoo wagered to CNN that Trump was 'just having fun at Biden's expense.' Trump on Wednesday sought to take this outside the realm of mere 'fun.' He ordered an investigation of Biden's use of the autopen and its supposed links to Biden's 'cognitive decline.' The move is guaranteed to breathe even more life into a story that has proven to be catnip for conservative media eager to keep the focus on the alleged coverup of Biden's decline. And Trump has certainly shown a talent for seeding baseless conspiracy theories for political gain (see: birtherism and the false notion that the 2020 election was rigged, among them.) But it's difficult to see how this leads anywhere, for a few reasons. The first is that there is nothing evidently wrong or unlawful about using the autopen. In 2005, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (under Republican President George W. Bush) conducted an extensive review of the legality of a president using the autopen. It found that 'the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it within the meaning of Article I, Section 7.' Trump has most often focused his autopen theory on Biden's pardons. (The idea that these are invalid would ostensibly allow Trump's Justice Department to investigate and charge the people Biden preemptively pardoned.) But there too, established legal advice from past administrations undermines the claim. A 1929 memo from the US solicitor general noted that the Constitution didn't even prescribe a method for issuing pardons. That means they don't necessarily even need to be publicly documented. (You might have heard in recent years about the prospect of 'secret' pardons.) And the memo explicitly says that pardons 'need not have the president's autograph.' The other key point is that many presidents have used this practice in one form or another. Thomas Jefferson bought and used such a machine back when it was first patented in 1803, according to the Shapell Manuscript Foundation. And even Trump himself has acknowledged using the autopen for certain things. Trump said back in March he has used it but 'only for very unimportant papers.' He specifically cited responding to people's letters. But in another case, Trump rather curiously seemed to indicate that he hadn't signed a major proclamation that bore his signature – the one at issue in his attempt to rapidly deport migrants using the Alien Enemies Act. That proclamation is a major issue in litigation that has already reached all the way to the Supreme Court. 'I don't know when it was signed, because I didn't sign it,' Trump said, adding: 'Other people handled it, but (Secretary of State) Marco Rubio has done a great job and he wanted them out and we go along with that.' Given the proclamation bore Trump's signature, that seemed to raise the possibility that the administration might have used the autopen for it. The White House later claimed Trump had in fact signed the proclamation and that he was instead referring to not having signed the original Alien Enemies Act. (But that argument strained credulity, given Trump cited how 'other people handled it' and the fact that the Alien Enemies Act dates to 1798. That means there is no way anyone could ever believe Trump might have signed it. The question Trump responded to also specifically referenced the proclamation, not the 1798 law.) In another way, Trump's Wednesday night memorandum isn't really about the autopen. It's about using that as a shorthand for something else entirely: what the memo calls Biden's 'cognitive decline.' Trump's order isn't just about reviewing whether any autopen signatures used by Biden were lawful; it also cites the idea that people used it as part of an effort to 'unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President.' 'I'm sure that he didn't know many of the things – look, he was never for open borders, he was never for transgender for everybody, he was never for men playing in women's sports. All of these things that changed so radically, I don't think he had any idea … what was going on,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. 'Essentially, whoever used the autopen was the president.' This theory – if ever somehow proven – would actually matter. The 2005 Bush Justice Department memo, for instance, made clear that while presidents could outsource the signing of documents, that doesn't mean they could necessarily outsource the decisions to sign the documents. The OLC memo emphasizes that 'we do not question the substantial authority supporting the view that the President must personally decide whether to approve and sign bills.' But however compelling the evidence that Biden administration officials covered up his decline, there remains no evidence that he wasn't actually making decisions to sign things. That's taking things to an entirely different level. Biden's advisers have denied any coordinated effort to conceal from the public his deteriorating condition during the final years of his presidency. And the 2005 DOJ memo suggests it would have to prove more than just that Biden wasn't particularly engaged, but that he didn't make the final decisions. Trump was asked Thursday if he had uncovered 'anything specific' that was signed without Biden's knowledge or by people in his administration who acted illegally. Trump said, 'No.' Biden, for his part, issued some strong statements late Wednesday. 'I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations,' the former president said. 'Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false.' The former president also called this 'nothing more than a distraction' to obscure Republicans' push for a dicey Trump agenda bill, which features Medicaid cuts in the House-passed version. The Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday that this could lead to millions of people losing their health insurance. Indeed, the political utility of the theory underlying Trump's memo is readily apparent. It's wildly popular in conservative media, with Fox News already devoting dozens of stories and extensive coverage to it. That includes this week when other outlets were focused on a decidedly less helpful story for the Trump administration: Elon Musk bashing the president's domestic policy bill. It's also nearly impossible to disprove it. History suggests that arriving at actual proof of Trump's theory is often besides the point for Trump. It's about repetition and seeding doubt. And Wednesday's action is clearly in line with that history.