NYT Connections hint today and answers for Thursday, 16th Jan

Need a hint for today’s Connections on Thursday, 16th January? Solving a confounding Connections conundrum often requires a select series of clues. Whether it’s assigning words to each group via a process of elimination or wrapping your head around some obscure trivia, a good tip or three can really go a long way.

Below, we’ve listed today’s Connections words along with all of the strategies we used in our puzzle-solving mission. Hopefully these hints will put you on the right path towards maintaining your perfect score!

In this guide:

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

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).

Connections hint for Thursday 16th January

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Think of stores and shops.
• Green: Attached to a flat surface.
• Blue: Other words for a covert operative.
• Purple: All of these words can be paired with the name of a rodent.
• Extra hint 1: Mole does not refer to the animal.
• Extra hint 2: Pack and Rug are in the same group.

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

• Yellow: Trade
• Green: Scone
• Blue: Mole
• Purple: Rug

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: Buying And Selling
• Green: Installed On A Wall
• Blue: Spy
• Purple: ___ Rat

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 Thursday, 16th January:

• Yellow: Buying And Selling (Business, Commerce, Market, Trade)
• Green: Installed On A Wall (Baseboard, Outlet, Sconce, Switch)
• Blue: Spy (Agent, Asset, Mole, Plant)
• Purple: ___ Rat (Gym, Mall, Pack, Rug)

Today’s Connections was on the easier side for me, with fairly straightforward categories that weren’t too difficult to discern. I guessed all of the marketplace-orientated words of the Yellow goup quickly enough, and the Green group was also fairly simple, since its not too often that you see words like “Baseboard” and “Sconce” without thinking of lighting fixtures, or at least the flat surfaces that lighting fixtures are attached to.

The Blue group’s “Mole” and “Plant” initially led me astray, since my first instinct is to think of the low-sight little mammal that burrows underground and the green things around my house that I always fail to water. But “Agent” and “Asset” made me consider spies, and then I realised how common it is in spy movies for there to be a “Mole” or a “Plant” in an organisation.

Last but not least, the Purple group came surprisingly fast to me today. As a child of the ’90s, I remember what it was like to be a Mall Rat – and to watch Rugrats!

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!