Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Thursday, November 21

Looking for Wednesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

Hey, there! I hope you’re having an excellent week so far.

I typically leave my daily recommendations for the end of the column, but I’m gonna leave a bonus one for you here today. If you have a Netflix subscription, you have access to some truly fantastic games on iPhone, iPad and Android devices at no extra cost. I helped put together a list of suggestions a few months back, and I think the service really has something for everyone at this point.

Netflix recently added Monument Valley and its sequel to the library. They’re relaxing, meditative puzzle games. A brand-new third title in the series is coming next month. I’m looking forward to that.

One other game about which I cannot say enough good things is Poinpy, my 2022 game of the year. I just started again from scratch and it remains an absolute delight.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, November 21, are coming right up.

How To Play Connections

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Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.

Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are...

• BOBA
• FETT
• POLO
• STAR
• OXFORD
• SPONGE
• BUBBLE
• PENN
• PEARL
• TORTE
• CORAL
• TEE
• ZIT
• JELLY
• FLANNEL
• TAPIOCA

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — mid-level fashion
• Green group — these get around in beverages
• Blue group — spineless creatures, but not necessarily cowards
• Purple group — “bar” and “pill” would fit in here

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s Connections groups are...

• Yellow group — kinds of shirts
• Green group — spheres in milk tea
• Blue group — marine invertebrates, familiarly
• Purple group — starts of pasta names

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

• Yellow group — kinds of shirts (FLANNEL, OXFORD, POLO, TEE)
• Green group — spheres in milk tea (BOBA, BUBBLE, PEARL, TAPIOCA)
• Blue group — marine invertebrates, familiarly (CORAL, JELLY, SPONGE, STAR)
• Purple group — starts of pasta names (FETT, PENN, TORTE, ZIT)

Darn, my four-game streak is over. Here's how I fared:

🟩🟩🟦🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟦🟦🟪🟦

🟦🟪🟦🟦

🟦🟪🟪🟦

Yup, I got red herring-ed. I don’t think that’s really a verb, but I’m making it one.

As much as I enjoyed seeing BOBA and FETT together as the first two words, it was immedately clear that they weren't Star Wars-related (I'm not a huge fan, but I do enjoy it!). As such, BOBA had to go with the rest of the greens — even though I slipped up by accidentally including JELLY at first. Whoops!

The yellows were up next as those were clear enough. I thought I had it from there. I was overly confident that SPONGE, JELLY and TORTE were kinds of desserts, but didn't see what would go with them. I tried STAR, CORAL and PENN to no avail.

In hindsight, STAR should have made the blues a little clearer, but it just didn't click at all. I surmised that there was some kind of wordplay going on with FETT, but I didn't figure it out. It's also a little surprising that we got two pasta-related groups in the span of a few days.

For the tape, the purple group relates to fettuccine, penne, tortelli/tortellini/tortelloni and ziti.

Alas. A new streak starts tomorrow.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Friday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I guess it makes sense to go with a Star Wars recommendation today, but I did not enjoy The Book of Boba Fett.

I've been meaning to get around to the Disney+ series Andor but haven't yet (I just started another great series on that service that I'll talk about soon). Andor is a prequel series to Rogue One, which follows a group of rebels who attempt to steal the schematics for the Death Star. I have seen that movie and it's a blast.

If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot!