NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Monday, May 12

Before we get to today’s Connections hints and answers, here’s Sunday’s:

Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to the start of a new week.

We have a little tradition around these parts. We kick off the Monday edition of the column with an upbeat song. The whole idea is to hopefully get you dancing around a little. Maybe loosen up those hips a bit. Perhaps get those endorphins flowing.

This week, we’re going to go back to 2012 and a song from a pair of Canadian icons. “Closer” is one of Tegan and Sara’s biggest hits. It’s a cracking dance-pop tune:

Before we begin, we have a great little community on Discord, where we chat about NYT Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot, and you’re more than welcome to hang out with us.

Discord is also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare (or not-so-rare) occasions that I mess something up. I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, May 12 are coming right up.

How To Play Connections

Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT’s website or Games app.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the publication’s Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.

Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are…

• VISIT
• BANK
• WALLET
• HIT
• SMACK
• ATM
• CASH REGISTER
• BOUNCE
• CLICK
• TIP JAR
• PURSE
• CAROM
• CURL
• PAGE VIEW
• RICOCHET
• PUCKER

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — the side of a couch and your back pocket would fit in here
• Green group — find a new romantic partner soon after a break up, perhaps
• Blue group — you’ll see these in the one type of situation where it’s okay to play with traffic
• Purple group — in the interest of keeping things clean, let’s gloss over some of the other options that would work here

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s Connections groups are…

• Yellow group — places to find paper money
• Green group — rebound
• Blue group — things tracked by web analytics
• Purple group — things you can do with your lips

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are…

• Yellow group — places to find paper money (ATM, CASH REGISTER, TIP JAR, WALLET)
• Green group — rebound (BANK, BOUNCE, CAROM, RICOCHET)
• Blue group — things tracked by web analytics (CLICK, HIT, PAGE VIEW, VISIT)
• Purple group — things you can do with your lips (CURL, PUCKER, PURSE, SMACK)

I was very close to back-to-back reverse rainbows but I got the yellow and green order wrong. Rats! Nevertheless, my streak is up to 76 wins. Here’s how I fared:

🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩

I didn’t have a clue what CAROM meant, so I left that well enough alone at the outset. PUCKER spoke to me first, as that’s something you can do with your lips. I found the other three words pretty quickly for the purples.

I thought that PAGE VIEW might have something to do with counters (hey remember those old Geocities sites everyone had?), which would make sense with BANK and CASH REGISTER, but it wasn’t quite coming together. As I looked around, I realized I was on the wrong track as VISIT and HIT made sense with PAGE VIEW. So too did VISIT, and that got me the blues.

From there, it was pretty straightforward. The yellows went together easily enough, since BANK clearly had to go with the other group. That left the greens. As it turns out, a CAROM is a shot in billiards in which the cue ball strikes two different object balls, or just a term for something bouncing off a surface. It’s also the name of a seed that’s used as a spice.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog tomorrow for hints and the solution for Tuesday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I wasn’t quite sure where to go for today’s song. I have a couple of other ones in mind for the coming days, but they don’t quite fit with the upbeat Monday theme (and I’m otherwise unable to stop listening to Electric Callboy).

So I turned to my trusty mega playlist and after clicking the shuffle button three times, I had a winner. You really can’t go wrong with LCD Soundsystem:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!

Please follow my blog for more coverage of NYT Connections and other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my new newsletter, Pastimes.