NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, March 19 (#647)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on March 19 for puzzle #647 are the same difficulty as 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, #646, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #647. 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: Mean, King, Express, Shoulder, Back, Median, Carte, Spell, Divider, Extensions, Mode, Refresh, Plancha, Lane, Forward, and Convey.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Signify
• 🟩 Green: Web browser buttons
• 🟦 Blue: Parts of a road
• 🟪 Purple: À/a la ____

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 hints: Find some meaning on the road of the web with a bit a fancy meal.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #647?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Signify: Convey, express, mean, spell
• 🟩 Web browser buttons: Back, extensions, forward, refresh
• 🟦 Parts of a road: Divider, lane, median, shoulder
• 🟪 À/a la ____: Carte, king, mode, plancha

Thought I had a nice down the line going today but messed up with that dang yellow. Ah well.

I saw carte and my inclination was a la carte. A la mode stuck out next, which made me want some ice cream. I forgot about a la plancha for a moment, which means grilled on a metal plate.

I got the blue category next as I was looking for more of a math connection with mean and median. It wasn't working but I saw divider and figured for roads. Lane and shoulder leapt out next.

I was looking for green next but but in convey, express, mean and spell first. I guessed wrong, it was the yellow group.

So we ended with back, extensions, forward and refresh as web browser buttons.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Exceptional: Remarkable, singular, special, unique
• 🟩 German words: Angst, die, kinder, wurst
• 🟦 Plural animals identical to their singular forms: Deer, sheep, shrimp, squid
• 🟪 Plural words that are very different from their singular forms: Dice, lice, mice, oxen

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #646, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I found this puzzle very interesting with what it was doing with the categories. Especially once you kick out the green group, which is where I started.

I lived in Germany as a kid so I think of the German "kin-der" before I think of the English "kind-er" when I see that word. So I was thinking German, wurst and die were obvious to me from there. It did take a moment to find angst because I forgot that it's originally German.

The yellow group stuck out from the animals, so knocked that out with remarkable, singular, special and unique.

I knew what the blue and purple categories were doing but I took a moment because I was trying to guess which was blue and which purple.

I guessed wrong.

I grabbed, deer, sheep, shrimp and squid which was blue but the meaning is that the plural and single versions of the words are the same ala moose or fish.

Which left purple with words that are vastly different from their singular forms, meaning they don't just add an 'S.' We had dice, lice, mice, and oxen.