NYT Connections Today: Thursday, July 24 Hints And Answers (#774)

Forbes

23-07-2025

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. Before we get to today's Connections hints and answers, here are Wednesday's:
Hey there, Connectors! I hope you're having a wonderful week.
I've been struggling to focus on playing video games lately, which is a bit of an issue when I write about such things for a living. I definitely haven't been playing as much as usual over the last six weeks or so.
But I think that's okay. We all need to take a break from a thing we're passionate about once in a while. It helps us to see them again in a fresh light when the time is right.
In the interim, I've still been covering video game news. A couple of months ago, I started doing a weekly roundup of indie game news and updates over at Engadget. It's been really fun to be able to devote a chunk of my time each week to exploring projects that myself or my colleagues might not otherwise have the bandwidth to write about, and then to shine a spotlight on them. The only real issue is that, when I'm ready to play a bunch of games again, I now have an even more daunting backlog of titles to check out. A fun problem to have, though!
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 Thursday, July 24 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...
The New York pro athletes – GIANT, JET, KNICK and NET (as in individual players for the New York Giants, New York Jets, New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets) – jumped out right away, but the basketball terms made me think those were a red herring. Still, I wasn't sure about either of those, so I went for the words that meant "big" first. That took care of the yellows.
I took a bit of a gamble with the basketball hardware words, since those made more sense together than including BOUNCE. Blues, done! (Seems weird to have this just a couple of weeks after we had a group of basketball moves?)
JET, BOUNCE, SPILT and DIP were all synonyms for "leave" so I assumed those had to be the greens. But, me being me, I had to submit the purple words first.
As I looked at those, I figured they had to be soundalikes for words meaning to acquire something illicitly – steal (STEEL), loot (LUTE), nick (KNICK) and rob (RABE). Not sure about that last one, but I'm going with it. I got that connection correct (though I struggled to think of a decent hint for it!). I then submitted the greens to wrap things up.
Another perfect game today. That extends my streak to 148 wins. Two away from another big milestone! Here's my grid for this one:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
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 'em.
P.S. I heard this song on the radio the other day. I can't remember the last time I heard it, and I'd wager the same holds true for you too. It's an all-time classic:
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.