NYT Connections today hints and answers — Thursday, May 1 (#690)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on May 1 for puzzle #690 are much harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 4.5 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, #689, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #690. 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: Pocket, Shake, Purse, Pan, Pot, Dolly, Fun, Price, Travel, Break, Bite, Kick, Zoom, Drop, Reward, and Tilt.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Winnings
• 🟩 Green: Stop, as a habit
• 🟦 Blue: Movie camera verbs
• 🟪 Purple: Words that precede "-size" to mean small

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: Take your prize as you enjoy some small fun making a movie, or don't.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #690?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Winnings: Pot, prize, purse, reward
• 🟩 Stop, as a habit: Break, drop, kick, shake
• 🟦 Movie camera verbs: Dolly, pan, tilt, zoom
• 🟪 Words that precede "-size" to mean small: Bite, fun, pocket, travel

I was admittedly worried with this one as its rated at a 4.5, but once I got the purple, I was able to slice through the rest.

I saw bite and immediately thought bite-sized. Fun was directly above and I had my path. Pocket followed quickly but it took a minute to see travel. I got stuck on purse-sized, which isn't really a phrase.

From, there I think the blue category is harder if you aren't familiar with the terms. These are camera terms with dolly, pan, tilt and zoom, but it is what I saw next.

The last guess was which group was green or yellow. I had picked break, drop, kick and shake mainly focusing on what the other category was.

And we ended with pot, prize, purse, and reward as our winnings.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Parts of a shoe: Heel, sole, tongue, upper
• 🟩 Accommodation: Capacity, chairs, room, seating
• 🟦 Reputation: Face, image, regard, standing
• 🟪 Ending with synonyms for "yuck": Dynasty, engross, gimmick, mildew

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #689, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I started the day with two options for what I thought were blue, so I flipped a coin and got it wrong.

So, I grabbed capacity and seating thinking it meant venue space. This led to chairs and room, which was the green group.

From there I put in the actual blue group of face, image, regard and standing which I thought meant reputation.

I got stuck here because I had sole, tongue and heel for part of a shoe, but had no clue what the fourth bit was. I tried upper just to see and yes. I was fairly sure this wrong.

I looked it up and the first diagram I found was a Nike one which didn't have the word upper in it, and was similar to a sketch I saw at the Nike campus a few years ago. However, I found a couple of other diagrams for dress shoes that had "upper" labeled. They noted different areas of the shoe but basically it seems to refer to the area between the toebox and where you tie the laces.

Anyway, I wrapped up things with the purple synonyms for "yuck." Dynasty, engross, gimmick, and mildew.