NYT Connections today hints and answers — Saturday, June 28 (#748)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on June 28 for puzzle #748 are significantly harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 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, #747, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #748. 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: Boot, Ball, Score, Points, Singer, Host, Drove, Stick, Tow, Diesel, Load, Bell, Bone, Ticket, Watt, and Frisbee.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Things a dog can fetch
• 🟩 Green: Great many
• 🟦 Blue: Possible results of a traffic violation
• 🟪 Purple: Industrial revolution inventors

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: Invent many dog toys to avoid tickets.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #748?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Things a dog can fetch: Ball, bone, frisbee, stick
• 🟩 Great many: Drove, host, load, score
• 🟦 Possible results of a traffic violation: Boot, points, ticket, tow
• 🟪 Industrial revolution inventors: Bell, diesel, singer, watt

I kicked things off with purple today having seen Watt and Bell. My first thought was pro sports players. But Singer stuck out to me for sewing machines which is how I got to Diesel as an inventor.

And then I grabbed the yellow with ball, bone, frisbee and stick because it's what stuck out to me next.

From there, I had boot and ticket as I was thinking parking tickets. Tow stuck out next. It took a second for points to click. Does everywhere use points? I don't know that anywhere I've lived does.

And I wrapped it up with "great many" with drove, host, load and score.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 In fashion: Chic, current, fresh, happening
• 🟩 Parts of an angel costume: Halo, harp, robe, wings
• 🟦 "Sesame Street" figures: Bird, count, grouch, monster
• 🟪 ____ Brothers: Blood, blues, chemical, marx

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #747, which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I started today looking for a Marx brothers connection thanks to Harp and Grouch (assuming they were missing O). The other brothers were not available.

Instead, I went with the other thing that caught my eye, Sesame Street characters with Count and Grouch and then Bird and Monster.

The angel costume stuck out to me next with halo, harp, robe and wings.

I probably should have seen the Brothers groups earlier, considering I started at Marx, but it didn't really come though to me until now. Marx, Chemical and Blues stuck out next and then Blood.

And I wrapped it up with fashionable; chic, current, fresh, and happening.

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.