Looking for Saturday’s NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For July 26By Paul Tassi

Stuck on today’s NYT Connections puzzle? Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered. Whether you need just a gentle nudge or the full set of answers, this guide will walk you through the hints, clues, and solutions for the Sunday, July 27th edition of The New York Times’s Connections. Read on for help grouping those tricky words and completing today’s challenge without spoilers — unless you want them!

New York Times Connections Guide Sunday July 27th

It’s the last Sunday of July and still blazing hot out here in the American southwest. Maybe August will bring those monsoons we need so desperately. If you’re looking to escape the heat, be sure to check out my weekend streaming guide. Lots of new shows and movies to keep you busy while you cool off indoors. I also reviewed the new Fantastic Four movie, which I thought was pretty bland unfortunately. In any case, we have a Connections to solve. Let’s group some words!

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, July 20th?

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:

• HALLOWEEN
• PICNIC
• EASY
• GRADE
• CHILD’S PLAY
• ELEMENTARY
• CON GAME
• TAILGATE
• GRAMMAR
• MAGIC SHOW
• BLOCK PARTY
• PIECE OF CAKE
• FESTIVAL
• NO SWEAT
• PRIMARY
• HEARTS

Hints for the Connections groups today are:

• 🟡Yellow group – Simple.
• 🔵Blue group – Words like “private” or “public” would also go in this group.
• 🟢Green group – Celebrations that don’t take place inside.
• 🟣Purple group – You might get fooled by this one.

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

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

• 🟡Yellow group – “Nothing to it!”
• 🔵Blue group – Words before “School”
• 🟢Green group – Outdoor events
• 🟣Purple group – Associated with tricks

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 – Child’s Play, Easy, No Sweat, Piece Of Cake
• 🔵Blue group – Elementary, Grade, Grammar, Primary
• 🟢Green group – Block Party, Festival, Picnic, Tailgate
• 🟣Purple group – Con Game, Halloween, Hearts, Magic Show

I used up to “tries” today on my first batch of yellow words because I thought ELEMENTARY should go with the other “EASY” words. As in “Elementary, my dear Watson.” It’s kind of an unfair word since it does, absolutely, 100% mean the same thing as NO SWEAT, CHILD’S PLAY and PIECE OF CAKE in that context. Unfortunately, I hadn’t really noticed that it fit even better with GRADE, GRAMMAR and PRIMARY, all words that also go before SCHOOL.

The final ones took a bit of thinking, simply because HALLOWEEN is also largely an outdoor event. It wasn’t until I started thinking about tricks and pranks and so forth that I realized how the purple words could fit together. I was thinking of costumes first, but that didn’t quite work (Magicians have costumes, con-men sometimes wear them…but beyond the obvious with HALLOWEEN…what?) In any case, this wasn’t the most challenging Connections ever, but it got my little grey cells working.

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.