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 Monday’s:

ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Hints For Monday, July 7: Today’s Clues And Answers

Hey there, Connectors! I hope you’ve had a great start to your week.

I’ll be honest, as someone who works remotely and probably a bit more than I need to, I spend too much time at my desk. I don’t get out as much as I should. While I have a nice, powerful PC that I use for work and gaming (which is also work much of the time), I also have a great laptop. So I’ve finally taken that big, bold step of bringing that portable computer outside with me and doing some work while getting fresh air.

I have a good spot for the time being – it’s in the shade until mid-afternoon – and the laptop’s battery has a large enough capacity to keep me going for a full work day, even when the screen’s at its brightest. With my water bottle, phone, a strong Wi-Fi connection and noise-cancelling earphones, I have all I need. It’s quite nice to be outside. I should do that more often.

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 Tuesday, July 8 are coming right up.

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.

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:

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into

Let’s take a look at one word for each group.

Today’s Connections word hints are…

Today’s Connections groups are...

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...

My first thought was that (Sabrina) CARPENTER and (John) LEGEND might be part of a group of singers, but I didn’t immediately see anything else that would make sense with those. SCALE, KEY and LEGEND could have been a red herring of map-related things too. The blues were easy enough, though. I thought those would be the greens at most.

The yellows were next after I drew a link between AFFAIR and THING in that weirdo brain of mine. I then realized that I was on kind of the right path with John LEGEND, but not in the sense of singers. There were three other Johns on the board, with actor CANDY, filmmaker CARPENTER (having THING on the grid was a fun reference to him) and former U.K. prime minister MAJOR. That took care of the purples.

I didn’t really clock the connection for the greens. But I don’t mind at all since that was a perfect game and my 133rd 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 Wednesday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I think Olivia Rodrigo is fantastic. Not only do I really enjoy her own music, I love that she has such interesting choices in covers (um, Fontaines DC?? Hello???) and invites some rad guests to perform with her live. During her Glastonbury headline set, she brought the legendary Robert Smith on stage to perform two songs of his, “Friday I’m In Love” and my favorite track by The Cure, “Just Like Heaven.” It’s a lovely performance:

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.