Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 20 for puzzle #801 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 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, #800, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #801. 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: Candy Cane, Carousel, Ceiling fan, Crook, Zebra, Knitting needles, Crochet hook, Barber pole, Yin-yang symbol, Crowbar, Piano keys, Chopsticks, Claves, Domino, Ski poles, and Lazy Susan.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Black-and-white things
- 🟩 Green: Pairs of rods
- 🟦 Blue: Things that rotate about a vertical axis
- 🟪 Purple: Rods that curve at one end
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: Curve a rod of oreo axis.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #801?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Black-and-white things: Domino, piano keys, yin-yang symbol, zebra
- 🟩 Pairs of rods: Chopsticks, claves, knitting needles, ski poles
- 🟦 Things that rotate about a vertical axis: Barber pole, carousel, ceiling fan, lazy susan
- 🟪 Rods that curve at one end: Candy cane, crochet hook, crook, crowbar
Initially, I was looking for different kinds of rods at the end of words with cane, bar, pole, and sticks. However, that didn't seem to work with the poles and needles.
Instead, I saw candy cane and then crowbar, which have similar silhouettes. This led to crochet hook and eventually a shepherd's crook.
Next, I was thinking stripes when I nabbed zebra, barber pole and piano keys. Clearly, nothing else seemed to have stripes, so that set didn't go anywhere. However, I did see domino and yin-yang which helped me pivot to black and white objects.
Sticking with stripes, I kept barber pole and noticed the other spinning objects, including lazy susans, carousels, and ceiling fans.
To end the puzzle, we had chopsticks, claves, knitting needles, and ski poles.
Twas a tidy little puzzle today.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Quite the talker: Blabbermouth, chatterbox, prattler, windbag
- 🟩 Fortified wines: Marsala, port, sherry, vermouth
- 🟦 ____ Rock: Classic, little, plymouth, the
- 🟪 Starting with ways to move quickly: Dartmouth, dashboard, flywheel, rushmore
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #800, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Because today is puzzle #800, I was hoping for something a little more elaborate for the big number.
The first word I focused on was vermouth, thinking maybe we'd build a cocktail. I suppose you could make one featuring marsala, port, and sherry as well, but I can't vouch for the taste.
The mouth bit was fairly obvious to me, with that thinking I went to Plymouth Rock next, which led to Classic rock, Little Rock and The Rock.
From there I grabbed the chatty blabbermouth, chatterbox, prattler and windbag.
And I wrapped up the puzzle with Dartmouth, dashboard, flywheel and rushmore for quickly moving.
Outside of the four mouth words, today's puzzle was fairly straightforward. Here's hoping #900 gets a little cheekier.
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.
Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.
