NYT Connections today hints and answers — Thursday, May 15 (#704)

Tom's Guide

14-05-2025

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on May 15 for puzzle #704 are a bit easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #703, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #704. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Today's Connections words are: Flute, Madrid, Grounds, Ice, Estate, Powder, Seville, Foundation, Butterfly, World, Reason, Crust, Slush, Basis, Bess, and Deal.
Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Here's a larger hint: Go to the theater as snow melts around thought processes of the real.
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #704?
Drumroll, please...
It's not often that you meet a category that you nothing about, but today's blue was one of those for me, fortunately, I was able to leave it to the end.
Today, I kicked things off today seeing crust, ice, powder and slush which I assumed was the yellow so I skipped it.
Next I found grounds and reason, which I thought was pointing at thought processes. Basis and foundation made sense at that point.
What helped me get the purple group today was reading some takes on the Champions League, where Real Madrid is a regular presence, right before starting the puzzle today. Real estate, real deal and real world clicked in after that realization.
Which left the ends of Operas, a subject of which I have little to no knowledge. The operas listed here are: Porgy and Bess, Madame Buttefly, The Magic Flute, and The Barber of Seville (which I only know via Looney Tunes).
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #703, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
How are you going to give me four Keanu Reeves characters and then strike me? Boo, I say, Boo.
Anyway, don't choose Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic because that category doesn't exist today.
Sticking with movies, I did get the blue category with Babe, Bolt, Dumbo and Ted as talking animals of film. I would quibble with Ted since he's a talking toy bear, and not just a talking bear, but that would ruin the Keanu trap.
Anyway, from there I saw the quartet of hyper, kilo, meta and neo as prefixes. I assumed this was the green set and didn't click.
Instead I went hunting for the purple group. I wasn't seeing the silent letters connection but I did see the yellow group of draw, pull, suck and wick. I didn't immediately see the capillary action part of the group, more I was thinking straws which works since capillary action is related to the movement of water (or other liquids) through narrow spaces.
This left gnome, knee, mnemonic and psyche for words with silent letters.
Thus I submitted the green group and then the yellow to close it up.