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NYT Connections today hints and answers for Monday, February 9 #974

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Get clues and answers for today's NYT Connections to keep your streak

NYTimes Connections
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Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 9 for puzzle #974 are a bit harder 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.

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

The New York Times Connections puzzle on February 9, 2026

(Image credit: The New York Times)

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: Approach, bonus, poker, needle, straws, loom, style, advance, near, way, scissors, fee, royalty, yarn, manner, the line

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

  • 🟨 Yellow: Used in weaving
  • 🟩 Green: Method
  • 🟦 Blue: Kinds of payment for an author
  • 🟪 Purple: Draw ___

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: A book on crafts can make a tidy sum.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #974?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Used in weaving: Loom, needle, scissors, yarn
  • 🟩 Method: Approach, manner, style, way
  • 🟦 Kinds of payment for an author: Advance, bonus, fee, royalty
  • 🟪 Draw ___: Near, poker, straws, the line

I'm all about getting that bread and royalty only has so many meanings, so I kicked off things by searching for other forms of payment and snagged bonus, fee, and advance for blue.

One of my New Year's resolutions has been to do more crafts, and while weaving isn't among them, I've spent enough time in craft stores to recognize scissors, yarn, needle, and loom all go together.

The line was the clue that stood out to me the most, being two words and all. I brainstormed some use cases for it, and came up with one that would make straws and near fit. I struck out once because I completely forgot draw poker is a thing, but I got there eventually.

With the hardest category out of the way, that left approach, manner, style, and way as the only contenders for green.

Yesterday's Connections answers

  • 🟨 Suppress: Gag, inhibit, muzzle, silence
  • 🟩 Same old stuff: Drill, grind, habit, routine
  • 🟦 Features of a strong password: Length, number, symbol, uppercase
  • 🟪Words after 'two: Bit, cents, faced, timer

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #973, which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5.

I'm a stickler for password security, so I had a hunch when I saw uppercase that I'd find a couple of other security hallmarks. Sure enough, length, number, and symbol were easy enough to spot for blue.

After that I rounded up a quartet of synonyms for yellow with gag, inhibit, muzzle, and silence.

This time of year is the perfect time for shaking up your day-to-day with all the New Year's resolutions still kicking around since last month. That's what I thought of when I saw routine, and habit and grind definitely seemed connected. Though it took me a while to realize drill was the last clue for green.

That left purple as today's rote fill with bit, cents, faced, and timer.

Connections tips — how to win at Connections

There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.

For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.

For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.

If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.

Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.

The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).

One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.

Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.

If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.

Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.

Scott Younker
Scott Younker
West Coast Reporter

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him. He also handles all the Connections coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game since it released.

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