Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Jul 21
Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #771.
Connections game play online
Need a hint for today’s Connections on Monday, 21st July? Whether you’ve already connected a few words or none at all, our list of hints may come in handy. Two or three matching words aren’t enough to complete a full Connections theme, and finding the fourth one can be a major challenge.
Let’s set you up with a bunch of hints and small spoilers to be revealed at your leisure. You may find the Connections solution after all!
In this guide:
- How to play Connections
- Connections hint for Monday 21st July
- What are today’s Connections groups?
- What are today’s Connections answers?
Here are the 16 Connections words for today:
| Freezing | Foot | Extra | Contraction |
| Icing | Shrinkage | Condensation | Melting |
| Possessive | Yada Yada | Bonus | Regifting |
| Festivus | Quote | Gravy | Vaporization |
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”.
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 for Monday 21st July
Here are your Connections hints for today:
- Yellow: Look for a welcome addition.
- Green: It’s liquid, but changing.
- Blue: As heard in Seinfeld.
- Purple: This theme is about the apostrophe mark.
- Extra hint 1: Every group except yellow contains a word starting with an ‘F’.
- Extra hint 2: Every word of six letters or less is either in the yellow or purple theme.
If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:
- Yellow: Bonus
- Green: Freezing
- Blue: Shrinkage
- Purple: Foot
Spoiler warning! Today’s Connections groups are revealed just below!
What are 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: Additional Perk
- Green: Phase Transitions For Liquids
- Blue: Concepts From “Seinfeld”
- Purple: What ‘ Can Indicate
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!
What is today’s Connections answer?
Here is the answer to today’s Connections puzzle on Monday, 21st July:
- Yellow: Additional Perk (Bonus, Extra, Gravy, Icing)
- Green: Phase Transitions For Liquids (Condensation, Freezing, Melting, Vaporization)
- Blue: Concepts From “Seinfeld” (Festivus, Regifting, Shrinkage, Yada Yada)
- Purple: What ‘ Can Indicate (Contraction, Foot, Possessive, Quote)
The term ‘yada yada’ was popularised by the Seinfeld series. I had no idea. Unfortunately, since I haven’t watched Seinfeld, the blue theme was out of reach for me. Perhaps you had better luck if you’re into 90s sitcoms.
Sadly, I didn’t fare much better with the purple theme. It’s one of those ‘ooh, that’s the connection’ situations where it makes perfect sense in hindsight. The green theme was the complete opposite though – I got that one in less than a minute.
Yellow was somewhere in between. ‘The icing on the cake’ popped into mind after a while, but only the connection between ‘extra’ and ‘bonus’ was obvious to me. I had to search for a minute before I found ‘icing’ and ‘gravy’.
