Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers, Wednesday May 21
Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #709.
Connectionsnyt Game play online
Need a hint for today’s Connections on Wednesday, 21st May? If you can’t quite connect the dots today, a few pointers may help you out. Perhaps it will help you approach the word mesh from a different angle, or perhaps it’ll jog your memory – whichever the case, we’ll get you closer to the Connections answers.
Hints and tips await! If you’d rather get a small spoiler, a theme reveal, or just the full Connections puzzle solution, we’ve got that too.
Here are the 16 Connections words for today:
| Trash | Patch | Laptop | Bar |
| Refuse | Music | Compact | Desktop |
| Clam | Block | Tablet | Pictures |
| Cream | Waffle Iron | Deny | Spray |
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 Wednesday 21st May
Here are your Connections hints for today:
- Yellow: These words will stop you from entering.
- Green: It’s storage, but digitally.
- Blue: The doctor may prescribe these.
- Purple: Look for ‘folded’ items.
- Extra hint 1: ‘Laptop’ and ‘tablet’ are in different groups.
- Extra hint 2: It may be helpful to group verbs together.
If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:
- Yellow: Deny
- Green: Desktop
- Blue: Spray
- Purple: Waffle iron
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: Prohibit, As Entry
- Green: Folders On A Mac
- Blue: Medicine Formats
- Purple: Things That Open Like A Clam
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 Wednesday, 21st May:
- Yellow: Prohibit, As Entry (Bar, Block, Deny, Refuse)
- Green: Folders On A Mac (Desktop, Music, Pictures, Trash)
- Blue: Medicine Formats (Cream, Patch, Spray, Tablet)
- Purple: Things That Open Like A Clam (Clam, Compact, Laptop, Waffle Iron)
Although ‘bar’ comes with a ton of interpretations, the other three yellow words weren’t too difficult to group together. The many devices spread across the remaining three themes were much harder for me. I made a tentative Connections theme with ‘laptop’, ‘desktop’, and ‘tablet’, but there wasn’t a suitable fourth group member. Driven by impatience I actually added ‘waffle iron’ as the only other device, but of course, that was way too weak a link.
I then started to notice both the ‘medicine’ and ‘digital folders’ themes. I don’t think you need to have a Mac to recognize the green group as such. Without ‘desktop’ there to distract you, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to interpret ‘tablet’ as medicine rather than a device, doesn’t it?
Only when I was about the hand them all in did I notice the ‘folding’ or ‘clam-like’ opening that binds the purple words together. Definitely not the most obvious common theme to notice!
