NYT Connections today hints and answers — Thursday, February 20 (#620)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 20 for puzzle #620 are take a giant leap in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 4 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, #619, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #620. 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

The New York Times Connections puzzle on February 20, 2025

(Image credit: 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: Rooster, Umbrella, Sleep, Star, SOS, Sunrise, Stay, Flare, Circle, Bunk, Signal, Dew, Alarm, Triangle, Worm, and Crash.

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

  • 🟨 Yellow: Alert
  • 🟩 Green: Spend the night (at)
  • 🟦 Blue: Associated with early morning
  • 🟪 Purple: Cookie cutter shapes in "Squid Game"

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 up early for some Squid Game after bunking in.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #620?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Alert: Alarm, flare, signal, SOS
  • 🟩 Spend the night (at): Bunk, crash, sleep, stay
  • 🟦 Associated with early morning: Dew, rooster, sunrise, worm
  • 🟪 Cookie cutter shapes in "Squid Game": Circle, star, triangle, umbrella

Because I saw the companion score first, I let that dictate my path a bit in that I was looking for the yellow to kick things off.

This was picked up quickly with SOS, flare, signal and alarm.

I was looking circle, star and triangle but wasn't immediately making the connection. Instead, I snagged worm and rooster as morning things. Dew and sunrise were obvious from there.

This did open up purple and I added umbrella. At this point, I vaguely recalled the shapes from Squid Game which helped.

Green became the rote fill bunk, crash, sleep and stay as slumber party synonyms.

Yesterday's Connections answers

  • 🟨 Structures by the shore: Boardwalk, dock, lighthouse, wharf
  • 🟩 Small imperfection: Dent, ding, nick, scratch
  • 🟦 Sounds a cuckoo clock makes: Chime, cuckoo, tick, tock
  • 🟪 ____ Tail: Cock, mock, pig, pony

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #619, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

It's February but this puzzle made me pine for a beach vacation.

We start with shore structures like the boardwalk, dock, lighthouse and wharf for our yellow group. All of which may features some scars including dents, dings, nicks and scratches.

Up until this point I was thinking hickory dickory dock, but it didn't quite work, obviously. We are a left with clocks sounds; chime, cuckoo, tick and tock.

The purple category left me wanting a drink with cocktail, mocktail, pigtail and ponytail.

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. 

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