NYT Connections Today: Hints, Answers For Tuesday, September 16

Hey there, Connectors! I hope your week is off to a fantastic start.

This is it, gang. The big one. Going into today’s game, my streak sits at 199 wins in a row. A pretty darn good run that I’m very happy with.

I love round numbers very much, though. So I’m really hoping I beat today’s game to make it an even 200. Let’s see how things go…

Anyway, before we start, I want to mention the great community we have on Discord, where we chat about Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. It’s a fun hangout spot, and you’re welcome to hang out with us.

Discord is also the best way to give me feedback about the column. I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.

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Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Tuesday, September 16 are coming right up.

How To Play NYT Connections

Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT’s website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.

Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don’t know how they fit together or what the category for each group is: that’s what you have to figure out.

There’s only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it’s game over.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by blue, green and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs – part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.

As with Wordle and similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.

Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow – correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.

NYT Connections Hints

Scroll slowly! I’ll first give you a list of today’s words, then a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll tell you the category names, followed by the full answers.

Today’s 16 words are...

• ROGER
• PEN
• ROSE
• MONTH
• SQUID
• PRINTER
• DONUT
• MONITOR
• JUROR
• WATCH
• TATTOO MACHINE
• TRIX
• FOLLOW
• WHITE
• VELVETEEN
• TRACK

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — record someone's movements or other activity
• 🟩 Green group — like egg, oyster and toilet paper roll
• 🟦 Blue group — newspaper and octopus would fit in here
• 🟪 Purple group — these might keep going and going and going and going

NYT Connections – One Answer Per Group

Need some extra help?

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

Let’s take a look at one answer for each group.

Here we go…

• 🟨 Yellow group — TRACK
• 🟩 Green group — JUROR
• 🟦 Blue group — PRINTER
• 🟪 Purple group — WHITE

NYT Connections Groups

Today’s Connections groups are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — keep tabs on
• 🟩 Green group — one in a dozen
• 🟦 Blue group — things with ink
• 🟪 Purple group — _____ rabbit

NYT 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 last chance to look away.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

• 🟨 Yellow group — keep tabs on (FOLLOW, MONITOR, TRACK, WATCH)
• 🟩 Green group — one in a dozen (DONUT, JUROR, MONTH, ROSE)
• 🟦 Blue group — things with ink (PEN, PRINTER, SQUID, TATTOO MACHINE)
• 🟪 Purple group — _____ rabbit (ROGER, TRIX, VELVETEEN, WHITE)

I didn’t have anything to worry about. I had no problem with today’s game. I usually put my answer grid after this thought process/reaction to each game to build up a little suspense as to whether my streak is still alive, but there's no point in keeping it a secret. I found this one very easy.

The blues were very obvious to me out of the gate, and VELVETEEN and ROGER gave the purple category away. If you were wondering about the hint, by the way...

I only vaguely recalled "TRIX rabbit." I could look up what that is right now, but honestly, it's nice to have some mysteries in life.

I feel like the blue and green difficulties should have been swapped here. Still, I got green then yellow for my 200th victory in a row. Might have a donut to celebrate. Here's my grid for today:

🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨

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

P.S. I looked around to see if I could find a song called "200." I spotted this one from Mark, a member of K-pop band NCT. I enjoyed it, and so that is your song recommendation for today. Hope you dig it too:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!

Please follow my blog for more coverage of NYT Connections and other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.