NYT ‘Connections' Hints For Thursday, August 14: Today's Clues And Answers

Forbes

a day ago

Each day's game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before we get to today's Connections hints and answers, here are Wednesday's:
Hey there, Connectors! I hope you're having a sublime week. That's 'what I got' for you in this intro. (Sorry, couldn't help it.)
I try to take care to give you folks fun, offbeat and often slightly cryptic hints for Connections every day while hopefully matching their difficulty level to each category. Above all else, they should be useful, so offering more examples of words that would belong in a group is sometimes the best way to go.
I don't ever want to get complacent with the hints, and I'm often looking at ways to try and improve them. To that end, I've been reading up on crossword construction and editing a bit, and came across a nice series of newsletters from Puzzmo that goes over the process. I found it all pretty interesting!
One missive about crafting secondary hints for crossword clues seems especially fitting for me. I hope it will help me come up with better Connections hints. That said, today's purple clue is a bit of an odd duck, I think.
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, August 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'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 our hints 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...
And the hints for today's Connections groups are:
One Word For Each Connections Group
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we're starting to get into spoiler territory.
Let's take a look at one word for each group.
Today's Connections word hints are…
What Are Today's Connections Groups?
Today's Connections groups are...
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...
I got the greens right away this time. No problem at all there.
I thought BOUQUET, CABOOSE and COOKBOOK might be linked since they all have a "boo" sound. But nothing else made sense with them. However, BOUQUEST did make sense with VEIL and TRAIN as part of a bridal outfit. However, I didn't clock the fourth word.
Taking a step back from those, I did figure out the yellows. With only half the words remaining, it was then easy to see what would go with the rest of the blues. I'll be honest, I didn't know what a BUSTLE was, but the rhyming construction of the purples was clear (I struggled to come up with a hint for that one that wouldn't make it too obvious). I submitted that group, and the blues for my 167th win in a row. Here's my grid for today:
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
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'm getting quite into The Prize, a power-pop/garage outfit from Melbourne, Australia. 'First Sight' seemed like a fun one to share that will hopefully inject a little more energy into your Thursday:
I'm looking forward to checking out The Prize's debut album, which is called In The Red and drops next month. I also dig their new single 'From The Night' and its harmonized, Thin Lizzy-style guitar solos:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! 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.