NYT Connections #1162 Hints And Answers For Sunday, August 16

How To Play Connections

Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.

The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.

There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can't just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.

You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you're close, it will tell you that you're one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.

NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, August 16

Below, we'll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.

Here are today's Connections words:

• STEP
• FROM NEANDER
• GIG
• AGENT
• GRAND
• WISE
• SHOW
• HALF
• PLAYER
• CONCERT
• HANDY
• PARTY
• GREAT
• SET
• ACTOR
• UPRIGHT

Here's an Extra Hint for Each Connections Group

• 🟡Yellow group – Live music.
• 🟢Green group – A member of a group or event or incident.
• 🔵Blue group – You might tack these onto “brother†or “mother.â€
• 🟣Purple group – Do the evolution.

One Word for Each Connections Group:

• 🟡Yellow group – Gig
• 🟢Green group – Agent
• 🔵Blue group – Grand
• 🟣Purple group – From Neander

What Are Today's Connections Groups?

• Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
• 🟡Yellow group – Musical Performance
• 🟢Green group – Participant
• 🔵Blue group – Family Relationship Modifiers
• 🟣Purple group – Descriptors for Our Human Ancestors

What Are Today's Connections Answers?

• The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow. The Connections answers are:
• 🟡Yellow group – CONCERT, GIG, SET, SHOW
• 🟢Green group – PLAYER, ACTOR, AGENT, PARTY
• 🔵Blue group – HALF, STEP, GREAT, GRAND
• 🟣Purple group – UPRIGHT, WISE, HANDY, FROM NEANDER

Here's the finished puzzle in the order I solved it:

Today's NYT Connections is a 4/5 on the Connections Bot difficulty scale though for a bit there I thought it was going to be a 5/5. I was mostly thrown off by what I can only describe as piano red herrings. GRAND piano. CONCERT piano. Even GIG and UPRIGHT felt like pianos to me. It wasn't until I got yellow out of the way and then focused hard on the strange FROM NEANDER term that I was able to (quite luckily) consider what our human ancestors were like: HANDY (they could use tools) and UPRIGHT (they were bipedal) and WISE (as in sapient).

After this, it was pretty clear that STEP and GRAND and GREAT and HALF were all modifiers to family members, like your half-great-step-grandfather. And all that left were the Green Words, aka “Participants†which is still the most annoying and vague of these groups in my opinion.

How'd you do on today's Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Find more guides to Wordle, Pips and Strands on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Let me know if you have any fun puzzle games in your rotation that I should try on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Have a great Sunday!