Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers, Thursday Jul 31
Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #781.
Connections game play online
Need a hint for today’s Connections on Thursday, 31st July? Some Connections themes are easy, but most are very difficult – the purple ones in particular. If you find yourself confused by the many words and their abstract links, take comfort in the fact that you aren’t the only one struggling.
Luckily, this guide includes a ton of hints, tips, and word reveals to help you uncover the hidden Connections.
In this guide:
- How to play Connections
- Connections hint for Thursday 31st July
- What are today’s Connections groups?
- What are today’s Connections answers?
Here are the 16 Connections words for today:
| Rock | Straw | Eye | Nature |
| Nations | Fiddle | Guess | Laugh |
| Coming | Party | Resort | Responder |
| Lady | Supper | Rail | Aid |
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 Thursday 31st July
Here are your Connections hints for today:
- Yellow: Look for a single word to add in front of each group member.
- Green: This theme concerns the runner-up.
- Blue: There are other words for ‘Earth’ and ‘supernatural perception’ in this theme.
- Purple: This is the ‘final’ group.
- Extra hint 1: Only the green theme lacks a word starting with an ‘R’.
- Extra hint 2: More than just the words within in theme, the themes themselves are related.
If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:
- Yellow: Lady
- Green: Guess
- Blue: Eye
- Purple: Supper
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: First ___
- Green: Second ___
- Blue: Third ___
- Purple: Last ___
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 Thursday, 31st July:
- Yellow: First ___ (Aid, Lady, Nations, Responder)
- Green: Second ___ (Coming, Fiddle, Guess, Nature)
- Blue: Third ___ (Eye, Party, Rail, Rock)
- Purple: Last ___ (Laugh, Resort, Straw, Supper)
This Connections puzzle seems unusually tough… But once you’ve found one or two themes, the rest won’t be quite as difficult anymore. It doesn’t happen often that the themes themselves are connected, but it does make for a fun (if not necessarily easier) puzzle.
Oddly enough, I discovered the purple theme first. It was mainly due to the word ‘supper’, which instantly made me think of ‘last’. The next connection I noticed was ‘last resort’. Following the purple group, ‘first lady’ and ‘first aid’ came to mind, which allowed me to complete the yellow theme.
At this point, I was suspecting the blue and green themes to be ‘ordered’ as well, so it didn’t take long to find them. Make no mistake though; it took a while to find those first two themes today, while only the third and fourth followed quickly – the exact opposite of the usual pattern.
