Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 16 for puzzle #616 are a little easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 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, #615, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #616. 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: Punch, Suggestion, Touch, Point, Match, Box, Triumph, Set, Hint, Complement, Oscar, Suit, Lamb Chop, Trace, Fit, and Retrieve.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Glimmer
- 🟩 Green: Correspond well with
- 🟦 Blue: Famous puppets
- 🟪 Purple: Dog breeds minus "er" sound
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: Get a glimpse of what works well together before everything goes to the dogs (or the puppets).
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #616?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 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
Something about Complement really stood out to me today, 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.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Divulge: Blab, dish, spill, tell
- 🟩 Words on a Mac keyboard: Command, control, option, return
- 🟦 Words shortened in rock genres: Alternative, emotional, popular, progressive
- 🟪 ____ Cake: Cheese, cup, pan, short
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #615, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
The puzzle itself surprised me, which was a bit fun, but otherwise went down the line.
I wasn't seeing the purple right away so I grabbed the yellow because I did see that first with blab and spill. Dish and tell lined up from there.
I happened to be looking up a Mac keyboard for work today so the command, control, option and return words stuck out to me as keyboard options. Sometimes it lines up that way.
For once, I actually saw the "remove the rest of the word" clue which I assumed was the purple in my attempt to go down the line.
So I clicked the left overs to get the blue which ended up being purple. Color me surprised. Anyway, purple was cheese cake, cupcake, pancake and short cake.
And blue ended up being alternative, emotional, popular, and progressive.
