NYT ‘Connections' Hints For Thursday, August 21: Today's Clues And Answers

Forbes

12 hours 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've had a fabulous week so far.
You know what? I'm feeling pretty good at the minute.
The cough that was bothering me for over a week is largely gone and I've made what, for me, is a significant change to my diet by trying to cut out bread completely. It's been successful so far since Monday. I think the key is simply not buying bread. What a concept!
Breakfast is now either a protein cereal with a banana, overnight muesli with a banana and blueberries, a protein smoothie or scrambled eggs. Lunch is a different one of those. I need to get into much better shape and I hope that, by ditching the two (okay, usually more) slices of bread I had every day along with 90 percent of the snacks and junk food I was having is a step toward that.
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.
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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 21 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 have to admit, I was worried for my streak when I drank in this grid. The TELETUBBY red herring was fun though (DIPSY and LA-LA are both characters in that show).
But after seeing NEVER NEVER, my brain instantly went to "land," as in the place where Peter Pan lives. DREAM, FANTASY and LA-LA were obvious partners for that, and thus I had the greens. The yellows were straightforward enough too, I felt.
I figured that RADIO TOWER, SATELLITE DISH and TELETUBBY all had something to do with TVs or telecommunications. I wasn't sure what would match up with them. But as I considered the rest of the words more closely, I realized that an INSECT has antennae like those objects, so that had to be the one I was looking for.
That left the purples, which became pretty clear to me thanks to GOOGLE and YANKEE. A CHEESE Doodle is a cheese puff snack. I'd never heard of a DIPSY doodle which, according to Merriam-Webster, is a term meaning "artfully deceptive or shady manipulation," among other things.
I do love GOOGLE Doodles, which appear on the Google homepage to commemorate a special event or moment in history. "YANKEE Doodle" is a nursery rhyme.
My streak survived and is now at 174 wins in a row. Wowzers. 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. Y'know what? I'm in the mood to bring you a Queens of the Stone Age deep cut. I've been listening to the band quite a bit over the last few days after catching a live stream of a festival set and recommending a couple of other songs from them yesterday. It's also a Thursday so I feel like you might need to hear something a bit energizing.
I'm not actually sure where the original version of "Infinity" is from. Some fans say it was recorded during the sessions for the band's self-titled 1998 debut. A re-recorded version appeared on some versions of 2005's Lullabies to Paralyze as a bonus track. In any case, it's a fantastic, stompy rock and roll song that would have fit right into the Rated R/Songs for the Deaf era. I love the way it explodes into the chorus:
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.