Sunday, January 25 Clues And Answers (#959)

Today’s Connections

Credit: NYT / Erik Kain

Sunday is here and with it, yet another NYT Connections puzzle to solve. Sixteen words need to be grouped into four color-coded categories – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and this guide contains some extra hints to get you to the correct answers.

It’s hard to believe that January is almost over, though I suppose we do still have a full week left of the first month of 2026. Next Sunday kicks off February. Pretty soon it’ll be Valentine’s Day, a holiday created and championed by chocolatiers, cardmakers and florists.

Be sure to also check out my latest weekend streaming guide for all the best new TV shows and movies out on Netflix, Apple TV, Prime Video and the myriad other streaming services we subscribe to these days. Sophie Turner from Game Of Thrones has a really great new thriller out, and the new Game Of Thrones prequel, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, is excellent. You can also check out the rest of my guides for Wordle, Pips and Strands on my blog.

Time to group some words, Connectioneers!

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, January 25

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:

• windows
• shell
• ate
• fill in
• ribbon
• sub
• hood
• menu
• tube
• cover
• dom
• alt
• ship
• bowtie
• temp
• enter

An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

Here’s an extra hint to help you solve each Connections group today:

• 🟡Yellow group – If a company has to call in a worker for the day to cover a shift, these words apply.
• 🔵Blue group – Italian staple.
• 🟢Green group – I might use these as I type this post.
• 🟣Purple group – add these to the end of lots of different words, such as relation or father.

One Word for Each Connections Group:

Here’s one word from each group to help get you started:

• 🟡Yellow group – cover
• 🔵Blue group – bowtie
• 🟢Green group – alt
• 🟣Purple group – ate

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:

• 🟡Yellow group – Act as a backup.
• 🔵Blue group – Pasta shapes.
• 🟢Green group – PC keyboard keys.
• 🟣Purple group – Suffixes.

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 – cover, fill in, sub, temp
• 🔵Blue group – bowtie, ribbon, shell, tube
• 🟢Green group – alt, enter, menu, windows
• 🟣Purple group – ate, dom, hood, ship

I haven’t had a really challenging Connections puzzle for this Sunday guide in a long time, and that trend continues today. There were some interesting red herrings – dom and sub, for instance – but mostly these were pretty straightforward.

I gravitated to the pasta first, naturally. BOWTIE was the dead giveaway. Once I saw that, I immediately looked for other pasta shapes and came up with RIBBON, SHELL and TUBE. The Blue Group was done in a hurry, much like a plate of pasta.

From here, I tried words that could be “backups” but put in ALT as one of these instead of COVER and got my first miss of the day. I noticed ENTER at this point, and moved ALT over with that and MENU and WINDOWS. This was a tad bit confusing, as there isn’t actually a key that says MENU on most keyboards. Just a symbol (and one I never use). Fortunately, this was all correct and the Green Group was finished.

From here, I went back to my “backup” words and used COVER along with FILL IN, SUB and TEMP and the Yellow Group was down. That just left me with ATE, DOM, HOOD and SHIP and, as per usual, the Purple Group was a freebie in the end. These are all suffixes for words like relationSHIP or fatherHOOD or kingDOM or activATE.

Not the easiest Connections ever but far from the most challenging. I still think we need a poison word or words, something to throw us off the scent.

How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or 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.