Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Sunday, August 31st

Today’s Connections

Credit: NYT / Erik Kain

Looking for a little help with your Sunday Connections puzzle? If you’re looking for extra clues – or the answers – you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find an extra set of hints, the categories for each group and, finally, the solution to today’s puzzle.

It’s the last day of August, and a fine Labor Day weekend to kick back with a puzzle or two. I’m a little sad that it’s suddenly the dregs of summer, even if I’m happy that the super hot days have receded and rain has finally come to the mountain.

Be sure to check out my streaming guide if you’re looking for some new shows or movies to check out this weekend. There’s some good stuff out to watch!

ForbesWhat To Watch This Weekend: New Shows And Movies To Stream On Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple TV And MoreBy Erik Kain

In any case, we have a Connections to solve, so let’s group some words!

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.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints For Sunday, August 10th?

These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:

• COORDINATE
• FISH
• DRUM
• PIECES
• DOES
• BOARD
• BASS
• FIDDLE
• DICE
• CHOP
• CARDS
• AXES
• BOARD
• FISH
• DRUM
• BASS

Hints for the Connections groups today are:

• 🟡Yellow group – When someone disses somebody severely.
• 🔵Blue group – Spelled like, but doesn’t sound like or mean the same thing.
• 🟢Green group – Parts of a thing you play.
• 🟣Purple group – Add each of these words in front of another word.

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

• 🟡Yellow group – Criticize Harshly
• 🔵Blue group – Heteronyms
• 🟢Green group – Common Components Of A Board Game
• 🟣Purple group – _____STICKS

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 – Bash, Blast, Flame, Roast
• 🔵Blue group – Axes, Bass, Coordinate, Does
• 🟢Green group – Board, Cards, Dice, Pieces
• 🟣Purple group – Chop, Drum, Fiddle, Fish

This was a much tougher Connections for me than last week’s Sunday puzzle. I got the Yellow words fairly quickly, but the rest were tricky. The yellow words were fairly obvious: You BASH someone when you want to insult them. You FLAME or ROAST someone when you want to humorously put their weaknesses or vices on BLAST. Perhaps we’re all just a little too used to this kind of thing.

Weirdly, I figured out the Purple words next. I suppose we get a little trained to look for words that pair with a unifying word when it comes to Connections. I thought of FISHsticks first and then quickly realized that CHOPsticks and DRUMsticks worked also. It took me a bit longer to come up with FIDDLEsticks, but what a great word that is. Not used enough in today’s society, more’s the pity.

I had already considered the gaming angle with the Green group, but wasn’t really sure until I’d gotten the first two groups out of the way. After all, CHOP and BOARD and DICE could all go together in a kitcheny sort of way. Now, I scooped up BOARD, CARDS, DICE and PIECES to play my board game with.

That just left the heteronyms. AXES can be plural for axe or axis. BASS can be a fish or a guitar. COORDINATE can mean a point on a map or people working together. DOES can be the verb form of “do” or the plural of “doe”. This feels almost more like a Purple category than green to me, albeit an easier connection than most Purple groups. Either way, a solid Connections this Sunday. How did you do?

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. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.