NYT Connections Hints for May 20: Full Guide, Tips and How to Play

If you're diving into the NYT Connections puzzle from May 20 and looking for a winning approach, you're in the right place. This guide offers a full breakdown of the gameplay, smart solving strategies, themed hints, and the complete answer key with explanations to help you crack today’s challenge.

What Is NYT Connections?

Connections is a daily word puzzle from The New York Times where the goal is to organise 16 mixed-up words into four distinct groups of four, all based on a shared theme. Unlike Wordle, where you're aiming for a single correct word, Connections tests your ability to detect subtle links whether semantic, phonetic, or even cultural.

Some words might seem like they belong to more than one category, so a sharp eye and flexible thinking are key.

NYT Connections- The Difficulty Levels

Each category is coded by colour based on how tough it is to identify:

Yellow – Easiest and most obvious connections

Green – A little trickier

Blue – Challenging and sometimes unexpected

Purple – The hardest group, often involving wordplay or obscure links

How To Play NYT Connections

Open the NYT Games section via the app or website.

You will be presented with 16 words arranged in a grid.

Your task: group these into four sets of four related terms.

Select four words you believe are connected and press “Submit.”

If you're correct, they lock in and disappear from the board.

You only get four mistakes, so plan carefully!

Tips to win

Read the words aloud – Hearing them can reveal rhymes or hidden sounds.

Think thematically – Especially for sports puzzles, consider rules, player roles, jargon, or team names.

Watch out for red herrings – Some words are designed to fit multiple groups. Be wary.

Look at prefixes/suffixes or phonetics – Tougher puzzles may involve how words look or sound rather than what they mean.

Spotting these patterns consistently sharpens both your logic and vocabulary over time.

NYT Connections Hints for Today

Yellow – Places or tools used to manage and equalize finances

Green – Common elements or structures found on agricultural land

Blue – Youthful mystery-solving crews from stories or cartoons

Purple – Terms that can represent both a type of plant and a body of water

NYT Connections Categories for Today

Yellow: account book

Green: seen in a barn

Blue: detectives of kid-lit

Purple: words before ‘bed’

NYT Connections Answers for Today

Yellow: LEDGER, LOG, RECORD, REGISTER

Green: BALE, HORSE, PITCHFORK, TROUGH

Blue: BROWN, DREW, HARDY, HOLMES

Purple: CANOPY, DAY, MURPHY, WATER

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