NYT Connections hint (Fri, 15 May)

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Saturday 16th May!

Looking for some Connections hints to help with today's puzzle on Friday, 15th May? It's not every day that the Connections puzzle simply falls into place after all! It wouldn't be any fun if it did.

But pacing up a storm in your living room while racking your brain trying to figure out the purple group isn't very fun either. Let us take some of the stress off with a few handy hints.

How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, 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". These are the kinds of Connections you'll need to make to solve the puzzle.

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 deceptive red herring connections placed purely 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).

Click here to play today's Connections puzzle!

Connections hint: Today's Connections words

Below you'll find various hints for today's Connections. Each of the below hints will make it progressively easier for you to solve today's puzzle. First we'll reveal the words in today's Connections, followed by our Connections hint for each group. Then we'll reveal one word inside each group, followed by the groups themselves; and finally, at the bottom of this page, we'll reveal the answers to today's Connections puzzle. Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

• TRAVERSE
• ABLE
• BIRD
• CIAO
• CROSS
• CURRY
• ELBA
• FORD
• JAMES
• JORDAN
• PALM
• PEEK
• PITT
• SAW
• WADE
• WAS

Connections hint for Friday 15th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow hint: Keep moving forward!
• Green hint: Legends only.
• Blue hint: Not quite
• Purple hint: Said by Napoleon Bonaparte (or was it?)
• Extra hint 1: One group is not quite right...
• Extra hint 2: Every group except blue has at least one word containing the letter 'O'

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

• Yellow: Wade
• Green: Curry
• Blue: Able
• Purple: Ciao

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

Connections hints: All of today's Connections groups

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:

• Yellow: Navigate Through, As A River
• Green: Multi-Time NBA MVPs
• Blue: Non-Palindromic Words In A Famous Palindrome
• Purple: Homophones Of Kinds Of Dogs, Familiarly

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

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

Connections answer today

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Friday, 15th May:

• Yellow: Navigate Through, As A River (Cross, Ford, Traverse, Wade)
• Green: Multi-Time NBA MVPs (Bird, Curry, James, Jordan)
• Blue: Non-Palindromic Words In A Famous Palindrome (Able, Elba, Saw, Was)
• Purple: Homophones Of Kinds Of Dogs, Familiarly (Ciao, Palm, Peek, Pitt)

Did anyone else feel personally victimized by today's Connections puzzle? This one had almost all of my weaknesses. We had sports themes, homophones, and an obscure saying I've never heard of before. Boy was I wishing I had this guide! With any luck, these hints made the process easier for you, at least!

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!