Today’s NYT Connections hint and answers (Sat, May 18)

Want a hint for Connections today? Piggybacking off the monumental success of daily puzzle game Wordle, the New York Times has another fantastically popular word game out now. It’s called Connections, and if you haven’t played it before, now’s the time to start.

In this guide, we’ll give you a handy hint selection for today’s Connections puzzle on Saturday, May 18th, before revealing the group themes and the Connections answers themselves. We’ll also explain how to play Connections if this is your first time coming over from Wordle!

Connections words on Saturday, May 18

For reference, here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Connections hint for May 18

Here’s a hint for each of the word groups in today’s Connections puzzle, plus a couple more clues to help you find the answer:

• Yellow (Easiest): Put two creatures together.
• Green (Easy): Think about the act of swerving.
• Blue (Medium): People sometimes play these during social events.
• Purple (Hardest): All of these have the same mechanical device located within.
• Extra hint 1: “Dogleg” and “hairpin” belong in the same group.
• Extra hint 2: Think of “Werewolf” the game, not an actual werewolf.

Connections groups for May 18

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today’s Connections puzzle, below we’ll reveal the four correct Connections groups – the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

• Animals Whose Names Are Two Animals
• Sharp Turns
• Classic Party Games
• Things With Spring/S

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today’s puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check just below for the full answer.

Spoiler warning! Today’s Connections answer lies ahead!

What is the answer to Connections today (Saturday May 18)?

• Animals Whose Names Are Two Animals: Bulldog, Catfish, Horsefly, Turtledove
• Sharp Turns: Dogleg, Hairpin, Switchback, Zag
• Classic Party Games: Categories, Charades, Fishbowl, Werewolf
• Things With Spring/S: Clock, Mattress, Mousetrap, Trampoline

Congratulations if you got today’s Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn’t succeed today, don’t worry – a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!

What is Connections?

Connections is a word puzzle game published every day by the NYT, the hosts of the endlessly popular Wordle puzzle. Crafted each day by crossword puzzle-maker Wyna Liu, Connections presents you with a selection of 16 seemingly disparate words, and you have to group them together in four sets of four, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words “Hook”, “Nana”, “Peter”, and “Wendy” are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, “Action”, “Ballpark”, “Go”, and “Stick” are all words which commonly come just before the word “Figure”.

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together – but be wary, because a lot of the time there are red herring connections placed in there deliberately to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day’s Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

That wraps up today’s guide on how to solve the NYT Connections word puzzle. If you’re looking for help with Wordle, we’ve also got you covered with our list of past Wordle answers, as well as the Wordle hint and answer for Friday 17th May. You can also check out our list of the best starting words for Wordle, or use our Wordle Solver tool to help you find the answer with ease!