NYT Connections today hints and answers — Friday, April 25 (#684)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on April 25 for puzzle #684 are a bit easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.

Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.

Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #683, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #684. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.

Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it

Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.

Today's Connections words are: Springboard, Vacuum, Spark, Summertime, Wintergreen, Witchcraft, Fallopian, Bubblegum, Autumn Leaves, Cinnamon, Launchpad, Inner, Menthol, Unforgettable, Test, and Catalyst.

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

• 🟨 Yellow: Gum flavors
• 🟩 Green: Starting point
• 🟦 Blue: Great American Songbook songs
• 🟪 Purple: ____ Tube

These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.

Here's a larger hint: Start chewing some tubes of gum while singing some Jazz standards.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #684?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Gum flavors: Bubblegum, cinnamon, menthol, wintergreen
• 🟩 Starting point: Catalyst, launchpad, spark, springboard
• 🟦 Great American Songbook songs: Autumn leaves, summertime, unforgettable, witchcraft
• 🟪 ____ Tube: Fallopian, inner, test, vacuum

I ended the day with what I think should have been the true purple group but we'll get to that.

Meanwhile, I started the day with the actual purple quartet of tubes; fallopian, inner, test and vacuum.

I saw the green and yellow groups near simultaneously and wasn't sure which four went with which color. I guessed gum flavors for green with bubblegum, cinnamon, menthol and wintergreen, twas yellow.

Which made green the starting points of catalyst, launchpad, spark and springboard.

And we ended with Autumn Leaves, Summertime, Unforgettable and Witchcraft. Apparently, all four are part of the Great American Songbook. Perhaps at some point I've heard of this catalogue but it wasn't available to me today and I had no clue what tied that those four together.

For me, this blue group should have been the purple category as it was the hardest one. Perhaps though I'm not jazz or showtune inclined enough to know that one and it's actually more common than I'm aware of.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Things that are white: Baby powder, milk, polar bear, snow
• 🟩 Kinds of lettuce: Butter, iceberg, leaf, romaine
• 🟦 "Batman" villains: Bane, joker, penguin, scarecrow
• 🟪 They have literal/idiomatic ears: Cornfield, musicians, pitchers, walls

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #683, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Here are the categories I was fairly confident about almost right away: Batman villains, types of lettuce, and powder. What I was trying to guess from there was which one is the purple group.

I couldn't decide so I threw together the left over four words to see what would happen. ...and took a strike with Polar Bear, Musicians, Walls and Cornfield.

So, I took the Batman villains of Scarecrow, Penguin, Bane and Joker, which ended up being the blue grouping.

I followed that up with the lettuce types of butter, iceberg, leaf and romaine just to be sure.

I was 90% that the yellow category was baby powder, milk, polar bear snow for things that are white. So I saved it for last.

Which left cornfield, musicians, walls and pitchers as the purple group. My confusion and hesitance here came from the word pitchers, which is apparently related to the phrase "little pitchers have big ears." Somehow it's a phrase that has existed since 1546 (according to Dictionary.com) and one that I have never heard.

Always nice to learn something new from a puzzle.