NYT Connections Answers: The New York Times’ brain-teasing word game Connections continues to baffle and delight puzzle lovers, and today’s edition — #744 for Wednesday, June 25 — was no different. If you’ve been scratching your head over cran, rave, rasp, and napkin, you’re not alone.
Players are once again faced with a 4×4 grid of 16 words, the challenge being to group them into four categories based on hidden relationships. It sounds simple, but red herrings and deceptively simple clues keep even seasoned solvers on their toes.
Today’s words were: Cran, Cup, Rasp, Rave, Straw, Goat, Hero, Blue, Plane, Lid, Jack, Saw, Flaming, Napkin, Chisel, and Swiss.
Clues That Cut Like a Chisel
To help you out, the puzzle offered a few cryptic nudges:
- Yellow: “This is one cheesy theme.”
- Green: “Often grabbed when buying a drink.”
- Blue: “You could use these to make furniture, for example.”
- Purple: “Is there something missing?”
Additional hints nudged players further: every group except purple included a word starting with ‘S’, and no, that ‘rasp’ wasn’t meant for your kitchen.
One spoiler revealed: “Jack” belonged to the Yellow group, “Napkin” to Green, “Rasp” to Blue, and “Flaming” to Purple.
The Final Connection Groups
After some mental gymnastics — and possibly a few failed attempts — the day’s solution became clear:
- Yellow (Easiest): Kinds Of Cheeses – Blue, Goat, Jack, Swiss
- Green (Easy): Beverage Self-Service Items – Cup, Lid, Napkin, Straw
- Blue (Medium): Woodworking Hand Tools – Chisel, Plane, Rasp, Saw
- Purple (Hardest): Birds Minus Last Letter – Cran, Flaming, Hero, Rave
It’s the Purple category that’s likely to trip most players up. What do Cran, Flaming, Hero, and Rave have in common? They’re all nearly bird names — Cran(e), Flaming(o), Hero(n), Rave(n) — just missing the final letter. A devilishly clever twist.
What Makes Connections So Addictive?
Created by The New York Times, Connections challenges your lateral thinking as much as your vocabulary. Like its sibling Wordle, it rewards pattern recognition and out-of-the-box thinking. But unlike Wordle, Connections adds layers of misdirection by grouping words that seem like they belong together, until they don’t.
As players know, four mistakes and you’re out, with the correct answers revealed whether you like it or not.
If you cracked today’s categories without peeking, congratulations — you’re in rare company. And if you needed help? Well, tomorrow’s another puzzle.
