NYT Connections Hints Today: Sunday, February 15 Clues And Answers (#980)
Today’s Connections
Credit: NYT / Erik Kain
Friday the 13th has come and gone. Lovers will have to wait another year for Valentine’s Day. It’s a perfectly plain Sunday, wedged between holidays, with President’s Day this Monday. We have a perfectly ordinary NYT Connections puzzle to solve as well, with a 2/5 difficulty ranking from Connections Bot.
If you’re looking for something to do after you’re done with your daily puzzle games, be sure to check out my weekend streaming guide for all the new TV shows and movies out this past week.
Alright, Connectioneers, let’s go solve this Connections!
If you’re looking for Saturday’s Connections guide, it’s right here.
How To Play Connections
Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.
The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.
There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.
You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.
NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, February 15
Below, we’ll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.
Here are today’s Connections words:
- vestige
- atlas
- ringmaster
- inferiority
- echo
- dialect
- thesaurus
- buzzard
- electra
- encyclopedia
- reminders
- calliope
- oedipus
- trace
- superiority
- dictionary
An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group
Here’s an extra hint to help you solve each Connections group today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Tomes filled with useful information.
- 🔵Blue group – Add a word to explain someone’s big issues.
- 🟢Green group – These words will help you recall something.
- 🟣Purple group – First syllable homo(phones).
One Word for Each Connections Group:
Here’s one word from each group to help get you started:
- 🟡Yellow group – Atlas
- 🔵Blue group – Electra
- 🟢Green group – Echo
- 🟣Purple group – Buzzard
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Reference books
- 🔵Blue group – Kinds of complexes
- 🟢Green group – Something that brings back memories
- 🟣Purple group – Starting with ways to reach someone via phone
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Atlas, Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Thesaurus
- 🔵Blue group – Electra, Inferiority, Oedipus, Superiority
- 🟢Green group – Echo, Reminder, Trace, Vestige
- 🟣Purple group – Buzzard, Calliope, Dialect, Ringmaster
Here’s the finished grid:
Today’s Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
This wasn’t the most challenging Connections, but I admit I was a little stuck on Purple (no surprise) and the red herring – Greek words like OEDIPUS and CALLIOPE – had me in a bind for a minute.
I did get the Yellow words pretty much straight away, despite ATLAS being part of the puzzle’s red herring words. Green came next, though I put together Echo, Trace and Vestige before tacking on Reminder. The first three all sound like memories, a bit wistful or foggy, while Reminder sounds so flat and boring by comparison.
I had forgotten about the Electra Complex entirely, which is one reason Blue took me a bit longer. But once I’d thought of an Inferiority Complex, I was reminded (ahem) of the twin to the Oedipus Complex.
Which left Purple, and even as I plugged them in I wasn’t sure what the connection was. Even the “theme” – starting with ways to reach someone via phone – was confusing. Then I noticed: BUZZard, CALLiope, DIALect, RINGmaster. These are all ways you might call a friend up, dial their number, give them a ring, or buzz them. I typically just send a text.
How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagramor Facebook.
Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Let me know if you have any fun puzzle games in your rotation that I should try.
