NYT ‘Connections' Hints For Friday, July 11: Today's Clues And Answers

Forbes

a day ago

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 Sunday's:
Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to the start of a new week. I'm delighted to be back with you.
Normally, I start Monday editions of my Connections column with an upbeat song. I really want you all to be in as great a mood as possible at the start of the week (and every other day!). A fun tune and maybe a little dance can help make that happen.
But I'm not going to do that this time, and I'll explain why. You've probably seen today's Connections grid at this point. If you know, you know. So, this time, I'll bring you have multiple relevant songs in my usual recommendation section at the bottom of today's edition. It'll all make sense when we get there. Promise.
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 Monday, July 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...
With absolutely zero hesitation, not even pausing for a second to consider whether they might be a red herring, I guessed a group of SPORTY, GINGER, BABY and SCARY – the nicknames of four of the Spice Girls.
I am a '90s kid. I am duty bound to form a guess with those. Alas, those did not form a group. I was not one away either. But I am okay with that. I will take the deserved L and be happy with it.
But hey, I still had three lives remaining and a puzzle to solve. I figured that SPORTY might be a reference to a car and quickly found three other words that made sense. I don't care much about cars, but something must have stuck in my brain from those times I watched Top Gear way back when.
The yellows (or are they blues?) were up next. The grid bunched BABY, ICE and POWDER together, making them easy to spot.
There was something about JOLLY and MISTER that caught my eye. For some reason, "roger" popped into my head. That made sense, given the JOLLY Roger flag and MISTER (Fred) Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood fame. Actors GINGER Rogers and ROY Rogers worked with those too, and thus I had the blues.
I couldn't make head nor tail of the purple group, which is a little ironic, given that my only inkling was that it had something to do with fish or seafood (BELLED = "jellied" eel? I really don't know). But no, it was a little more abstract than that!
I do know all of these, by the way, since they refer to characters from Disney's legendary early '90s run – perhaps the Spice Girl nicknames were a subtle hint in that direction? Anyway, here's what they refer to:
An excellent puzzle today, I thought. I didn't get a perfect game this time, but that's my 139th win on the spin. 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 mean, what else could today's song recommendation possibly be other than this:
Well, and this:
And one more, because why not (although we'll have have to pretend one very, very ill-advised lyric never happened):
Look, I like Spice Girls, okay?
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.