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NYT Connections hints and answers for Thu, November 21st

Need some Connections hints? Read our guide for help with Connections #528.

An abstract image with an altered Connections logo in the centre, surrounded by circles connected by webbed lines.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's solution? Check out the Connections hint and answers for Friday 6th December!

Looking for a hint to help with today's Connections puzzle on 21st November? Connections is almost always challenging, becoming more convoluted the more you look at it. If you're in this situation, we have you covered with a collection of clues below.

Connections is a word puzzle game published every day by the New York Times (NYT), the hosts of the endlessly popular Wordle puzzle. Crafted each day by puzzle-maker Wyna Liu, Connections presents you with a selection of 16 seemingly disparate words, and you have to group them together in four sets of four, where each group of four words has a common theme.

It's a simple premise, but as many of us here know, Connections can be devilishly difficult at times, filled to the brim with red herrings, misleading words, and little-known trivia. If you're struggling to solve today's Connections puzzle, this guide will help you to find the answers for Thursday, 21st November 2024.

Below we offer some carefully crafted hints and clues for today's Connections, and after that we reveal the four different groups, and finally the Connections answers themselves for those who are tired of wondering how it all fits together.

In this guide:

Connections hints for Thursday 21st November

Here's a hint for each of the word groups in today's Connections puzzle, plus a couple more Connections clues to help you find the answer.

Our Connections hints for today are:

  • Yellow (Easiest): These words are all types of a certain piece of clothing.
  • Green (Easy): Similar shapes in tea.
  • Blue (Medium): Found within the ocean.
  • Purple (Hardest): All of these words have a particular Italian food in common.
  • Extra hint 1: There are no 'types of cake' groups today.
  • Extra hint 2: 'Boba' and 'Fett' belong to two different groups.

If you're looking for more Connections hints today to help narrow down the answers, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

Yellow (Easiest):

OXFORD

Green (Easy):

BUBBLE

Blue (Medium):

SPONGE

Purple (Hardest):

PENN

Looking for an alternative to Wordle? Here are eight of our favourite Wordle-likes to add to your morning puzzle routine.Watch on YouTube

What are today's Connections words?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Boba Fett Polo Star
Oxford Sponge Bubble Penn
Pearl Torte Coral Tee
Zit Jelly Flannel Tapioca

What are today's Connections groups?

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

  • Kinds of shirts
  • Spheres in milk tea
  • Marine invertebrates, familiarly
  • Starts of pasta names

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check just below for the full answer.


Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the full answers to today's Connections puzzle on Thursday, 21st November:

  • Kinds of shirts: Flannel, Oxford, Polo, Tee
  • Spheres in milk tea: Boba, Bubble, Pearl, Tapioca
  • Marine invertebrates, familiarly: Coral, Jelly, Sponge, Star
  • Starts of pasta names: Fett, Penn, Torte, Zit

Today's Connections had me confused and grasping for a 'types of cakes' category. Admittedly, I also couldn't see past Boba Fett. Hopefully, you did better than me (it wouldn't take much)!

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle.


What is Connections?

Connections is one of the most popular daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words "Hook", "Nana", "Peter", and "Wendy" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, "Action", "Ballpark", "Go", and "Stick" are all words which commonly come just before the word "Figure".

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are red herring connections placed in there deliberately to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

That wraps up today's guide on how to solve the NYT Connections word puzzle. If you're looking for help with Wordle, we've also got you covered with our list of past Wordle answers, as well as the Wordle hint and answer for Friday 6th December. You can also check out our list of the best starting words for Wordle, or use our Wordle Solver tool to help you find the answer with ease!

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