Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 17 for puzzle #617 are a smidge easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 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, #616, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #617. 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: Double, Blow, Snake, Break, Leave, Wind, Cat, Strike, Spare, Rest, Sword, Weave, Vacation, Curve, Turkey, and Gold
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Time off
- 🟩 Green: Follow a meandering course
- 🟦 Blue: Bowling results
- 🟪 Purple: ___ fish
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: Take the scenic route, verb your nouns, and cast a line for some gutter balls.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #617?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Time off: Break, Leave, Rest, Vacation
- 🟩 Follow a meandering course: Curve, Snake, Weave, Wind
- 🟦 Bowling results: Double, Spare, Strike, Turkey
- 🟪 ___ Fish: Blow, Cat, Gold, Sword
I've fallen headfirst into a cross-stitching hyperfixation as of late, so it's little wonder that Snake and Weave were the first clues to jump out at me. I struggled to fill out the rest of the category until I spotted Curve and, after an embarrassing amount of time, it finally hit me that maybe I was reading Wind wrong (like the verb, not the noun — doi).
With Snake out of the way, I started side-eyeing the other animal-related clues to figure out what they could mean beyond the obvious. Once I saw Strike, I knew Turkey had to be about bowling, and Spare and Double were easy enough to snag for the rest of the blue category.
Next came yellow with a little R&R, namely Break, Leave, Rest, and Vacation.
That only left Blow, Cat, Gold, and Sword for the purple category, and I stared at it for a good bit before it finally hit me. Just keep swimming, y'all.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Glimmer: Hint, Suggestion, Touch, Trace
- 🟩 Correspond well with: Complement, Fit, Match, Suit
- 🟦 Famous puppets: Lamb Chop, Oscar, Punch, Triumph
- 🟪 Dog breeds minus "er" sound: Box, Point, Retrieve, Set
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #616, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Something about Complement really stood out to me in yesterday's puzzle, so I first went sniffing around for synonyms for that and quickly dug up Fit, Match, and Suit to round out the green category.
I floundered a bit trying to lock in the yellow category, at first thinking it had something to do with hand signals or senses of touch. Once I reshuffled and got Hint and Suggestion near each other, though, it finally dawned on me and I scooped up Touch and Trace to finish out the rest.
I just finished watching a documentary on Sesame Street the other day, so Oscar and Lamb Chop immediately stuck out to me among the remaining clues. Punch and Judy are before my time, but thankfully there were only so many clues left that could potentially be names. After I struck out a few times and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog came back to me from some half-remembered YouTube compilation I watched years ago, I took a guess on Punch and it paid off.
That left only Box, Point, Retrieve, and Set as today's rote fill for the purple category. I almost never get the "missing one sound/letter" clues, and today was no different.
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