NYT Connections today hints and answers — Tuesday, April 22 (#681)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on April 22 for puzzle #681 are a smidge harder 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, #680, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #681. 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: Ice, Wheel, Grease, Lightning, Fire, Eel, Axe, Sun, Clay, Scrap, Volcano, Glaze, Drop, Banana Peel, Kiln, and Cut.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Cancel, as a project
• 🟩 Green: Seen in a pottery studio
• 🟦 Blue: Things that are slippery
• 🟪 Purple: Natural producers of heat

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: Don't slip on the heat as you throw some pots while cancelling plans.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #681?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Cancel, as a project: Axe, cut, drop, scrap
• 🟩 Seen in a pottery studio
• 🟦 Things that are slippery: Banana peel, eel, grease, ice
• 🟪 Natural producers of heat: Fire, lightning, sun volcano

I don't know that I've ever been more surprised by a purple reveal than I was today.

I spotted kiln and glaze first and immediately thought pottery. Clay and wheel seemed to confirm this. However, I did not select it yet because I thought it would be the blue group.

Instead, my first group was banana peel, eel, grease and ice as slippery things. I don't know why I thought this would be the purple group but it turned out to be blue.

Thinking, I tricked myself, I put in the pottery group which ended up being green.

Fire, lightning, sun and volcano stuck out to me as heat. So I skipped them thinking it would be yellow and instead put in axe, cut, drop and scrap.

I came out of this puzzle with no idea of how it was ranked for difficulty between the four groups.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Info on a nutrition label: Fat, Iron, Protein, Sodium
• 🟩 Metaphor for something unexpected: Bombshell, Curveball, Twist, Wrench
• 🟦 Things you can insert into a spreadsheet: Cell, Column, Row, Sheet
• 🟪 Helical things: Corkscrew, DNA, Fusilli, Spring

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #680, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I've been knee deep in spreadsheets these past few weeks, so I spotted the blue category immediately with Cell, Column, Row, and Sheet (all things I see floating behind my eyelids when I go to sleep at night these days).

After that I was floundering for a bit before I finally recognized a few yellow category words on the bag of chips beside me and scooped that up with Fat, Iron, Protein and Sodium.

I shuffled the clues around for some inspiration, and Corkscrew and DNA landing next to each other was all I needed to figure out the rest of purple with Fusilli and Spring.

That left the green category as today's rote fill with Bombshell, Curveball, Twist, and Wrench.