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NYT Connections hints and answers, Wednesday Feb 5

Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #604.

An abstract image with an altered Connections logo in the centre, surrounded by circles connected by webbed lines.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT
Marloes Valentina Stella avatar
Guide by Marloes Valentina Stella Contributor
Published on

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Thursday 13th February!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Wednesday, 5th February? If the words aren't clicking for you today, we'll help you find the common themes with some helpful hints. Perhaps we can steer you towards that one particularly pesky theme, or help you find the three easier groups first.

Connections is a very difficult type of puzzle as it requires both knowledge and a bit of luck, so there's no shame in needing a little help! This guide will show you how to find today's solution.

In this guide:

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Fan Flag William Tell
Bonus Banknote Cut Deal
Beak Salary Invoice Giveaway
Insurance Sign Shuffle Vacation

How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) 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 deceptive red herring connections placed purely 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).

Click here to play today's Connections puzzle!

Connections hint for Wednesday 5th February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

  • Yellow: These are work-related words.
  • Green: These words may "point something out".
  • Blue: Think about cards.
  • Purple: Come up with a single replacement word for all of these terms.
  • Extra hint 1: Every word starting with 'B' is either in the yellow or purple category.
  • Extra hint 2: Try shortening the name William.

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

  • Yellow: Salary
  • Green: Flag
  • Blue: Fan
  • Purple: Beak
Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

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:

  • Yellow: Parts Of A Compensation Package
  • Green: Indication
  • Blue: Things To Do With A Deck Of Cards
  • Purple: What "Bill" Might Refer To

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

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

What is today's Connections answer?

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Wednesday, 5th February:

  • Yellow: Parts Of A Compensation Package (Bonus, Insurance, Salary, Vacation)
  • Green: Indication (Flag, Giveaway, Sign, Tell)
  • Blue: Things To Do With A Deck Of Cards (Cut, Deal, Fan, Shuffle)
  • Purple: What "Bill" Might Refer To (Banknote, Beak, Invoice, William)
A screenshot showing the Connections answers on February 5, 2025.
Here are the February 5 Connections answers. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT

Thank you, NYT, for reminding me of every famous William who ever lived today. I don't think 'Bill' was too hard to arrive at, especially since William was the only name in today's Connections puzzle, but I still wasted a fair bit of time thinking of actual people first.

Today I was also reminded that beaks are sometimes called 'bills' instead. It seems the flatter type of bird beaks qualify as a bill, but as someone who typically doesn't bother with that distinction and calls every bird-mouth a beak, it took me a while to make the connection. It's a shame, really, as I found the rest of the purple group fairly easy following the William thing. 'Banknote' and 'invoice' seemed quite closely connected already, so it's not too hard to arrive at 'bill' from there.

There were many false connections in today's puzzle too. It's devilishly easy to group banknote and invoice with 'salary', 'cut', or 'bonus'. Only when I started to form a work-related group did I manage to separate them all. It's a good thing the green group didn't have any major distractions, so I was able to connect them fairly quickly and rule them out.

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!

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