Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 14 for puzzle #614 are a bit easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 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, #613, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #614. 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: Surprise, Humor, See, Straight, Baby, Rattle, Boo, Creak, Hiss, Bae, Gotcha, Pamper, Shed, Guess Who, Indulge, and Slither.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Mollycoddle
- 🟩 Green: Things a rattlesnake does
- 🟦 Blue: Words to an unsuspecting person
- 🟪 Purple: Homophones of bodies of water
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: Visit the beach, avoid rattlesnakes and don't mollycoddle those you surprise.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #614?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Mollycoddle: Baby, humor, indulge, pamper
- 🟩 Things a rattlesnake does: Hiss, rattle, shed, slither
- 🟦 Words to an unsuspecting person: Boo, gotcha, guess who, surprise
- 🟪 Homophones of bodies of water: Bae, creak, see, straight
Today, I saw Guess Who and was thinking about the kids board game. Gotcha stuck out to me though and I imagined someone putting their hands over someone's eyes. This opened up boo and surprise as well.
Rattle, baby and pamper seem to imply infants but rattle and slither clicked for me as snake-y. Which got us to hiss and sled.
With purple and yellow left I just picked out the yellow group but entered purple first. Thus, we had bae (bay), creak (creek), see (sea) and straight (strait).
And ended with baby, humor, indulge and pamper for the last group.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Template: Blueprint, guide, model, mold
- 🟩 Demonstration of appreciation: Expression, gesture, symbol, token
- 🟦 Modal verbs: Can, might, must will
- 🟪 ____ Trip: Ego, trip, head, power
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #613, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
As I was reading the board, ego and power were essentially next to one another as I was going left to right. When I saw ego I near immediately though ego trip and power being so close easily leant itself to power trip. Locked in there, guilt being directly above power got me to guilt trip. It took a second to see head for head trip. Strange that three of the four purple words were stacked like that.
From there, I snagged green's expression, gesture, symbol and token with my thought being gratitude, close enough.
After that we picked up can, might, must and will as modal verbs but mostly because I was saving yellow's blueprint, guide, model and mold as templates.
I innately know what a modal verb is but had forgotten how they're described grammatically. According to Merriam Webster they are a group of auxiliary verbs that change another verb's meaning. "Modals may express permission, ability, prediction, possibility, or necessity."
Here's an example sentence: A trip like this can take hours more than one appreciates.
