NYT Connections Hints Today: Sunday, February 8 Clues And Answers (#973)
Today’s Connections
Credit: NYT / Erik Kain
Another lazy Sunday, another NYT Connections puzzle to solve. Sixteen seemingly random words to parse, dividing them into four groups with some shared meaning. I found today’s puzzle a bit challenging, but certainly far from the hardest we’ve seen.
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.
Now put on your thinking caps, and 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 8
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:
- timer
- inhibit
- symbol
- routine
- gag
- length
- cents
- muzzle
- faced
- number
- uppercase
- drill
- bit
- silence
- habit
- grind
An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group
Here’s an extra hint to help you solve each Connections group today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Keep it down, as in censorship.
- 🔵Blue group – Security measure for your accounts.
- 🟢Green group – Pattern, as in the daily slog.
- 🟣Purple group – Place a number in front of these words.
One Word for Each Connections Group:
Here’s one word from each group to help get you started:
- 🟡Yellow group – Gag
- 🔵Blue group – Length
- 🟢Green group – Drill
- 🟣Purple group – Bit
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Suppress
- 🔵Blue group – Features of a strong password
- 🟢Green group – Same old stuff
- 🟣Purple group – Words after “two”
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 – Gag, Inhibit, Muzzle, Silence
- 🔵Blue group – Length, Number, Symbol, Uppercase
- 🟢Green group – Drill, Grind, Habit, Routine
- 🟣Purple group – Bit, Cents, Faced, Timer
Here’s the finished grid:
NYT Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Connections Bot lists this as a 2/5 difficulty Connections puzzle, but I thought it was every bit as hard as last week’s. The only difference, I suppose, is that the Purple was actually kind of obvious today. Not at first, but after I thought about it.
Really, what gave Purple away was the word FACED. I couldn’t pair that with anything, and then I thought of “two-faced” as in “You two-faced dirty liar!” From here, the “two-bit two-timer” was pretty obvious, though that’s just my two cents.
This is the first time I’ve gotten Purple before the end in many months. It’s happened before, but it’s rare. Weirdly, the Blue Group gave me the most trouble. I just didn’t think of password components. I kept thinking these were some kind of keyboard symbols or something along those lines.
Yellow was easy today, which isn’t surprising. Gag, Inhibit, Muzzle, Silence . . . all the actions of petty tinpot dictators and social media bullies. Green was pretty easy also. You know the drill. The daily grind. It’s basically a habit at this point. The same old routine, day after day.
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.
