NYT ‘Connections’ Hints For Wednesday, May 28: Clues And Answers For Today’s Game

Each day’s game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. As such, “today’s Connections hints and answers” depend on where you are in the world. In case you need them, here are the Connections hints and answers for Tuesday:

It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means: it’s time for another game of Connections!

FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is a horrible phenomenon. I try to dispel it as best I can, especially in situations where there isn’t much I can do to avoid missing out on something cool or interesting.

That said, I do wish I’d have gotten into Electric Callboy before locking in upcoming travel plans. The degree to which I have fallen for this band is shocking (As I write this, I’m listening to their catchy, dark new single, “Revery,” on repeat). They’re the definition of a “fun metal thing.” I’m bummed that I didn’t really listen to them before they toured North America in late 2023 and early 2024. Now I’ll have to wait until at least next year for them to come around to these parts on their current world tour.

The band did just start a European festival run last weekend. I’ve seen a bunch of clips and videos, and like everything else I’ve seen from the band’s shows (I’m wayyyy down the rabbit hole here), it seems like such a great time to see them live. Unfortunately, none of the dates line up with my upcoming trip to Scotland, so I won’t be able to take a short jaunt to the mainland to see Electric Callboy while I’m that part of the world on this trip.

Nor do their November, January and February European dates line up with a trip I have booked for the holidays. Had I known in advance, I would have altered my plans.

I mean, I could just blow all of my reward miles to fly over and see one of their festival dates over the next few weeks. There’s nothing really stopping me, other than having to go through the whole international flight slog. But I’ll just be patient. There’s no chance I’m booking any travel for next year until I know the group’s North American tour plans.

My point here is that FOMO is a ridiculous concept. Either go and do the thing you don’t want to miss out on or wait patiently for your next opportunity. Fretting about it does you no good.

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 Wednesday, May 28 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…

• CHICAGO
• POPE
• MOONLIGHT
• BRIDGE
• WHEEL
• ROCKY
• CHAIN
• LINK
• BLUEST
• UNITE
• GLADIATOR
• PEDAL
• JOIN
• SADDLE
• SKAT
• CRASH

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — bring together
• Green group — you won’t get a suspension if you get this one incorrect
• Blue group — shine a spotlight on the artist before they become the departed
• Purple group — raven and housed would fit in 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 — connect
• Green group — parts of a bike
• Blue group — Best Picture winners since 2000
• Purple group — music genres plus a letter

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 — connect (BRIDGE, JOIN, LINK, UNITE)
• Green group — parts of a bike (CHAIN, PEDAL, SADDLE, WHEEL)
• Blue group — Best Picture winners since 2000 (CHICAGO, CRASH, GLADIATOR, MOONLIGHT)
• Purple group — music genres plus a letter (BLUEST, POPE, ROCKY, SKAT)

Another perfect game brings my streak up to 92 wins. Can I make it to 100? Here’s how I fared:

🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦

Quite the lineup of words today! Just putting this out there, the first thing that came to mind when the grid popped up and CHICAGO appeared as the first word was “things associated with stars.”

Anyway, that, ROCKY, GLADIATIOR, CRASH (ugh) and MOONLIGHT are all movies that won the Oscar for Best Picture. But there were five of them so something had to give.

JOIN helped me figure out the yellows first, so I squared those away. WHEEL, CHAIN, PEDAL and SADDLE had to go together after that for the greens. So far, so good.

But I still had the five Best Picture contenders (so to speak) in the mix. What could link BLUEST, SKAT and POPE? 🤔

SKAT seemed like the odd one out there. It made me think of scatting, but that’s spelled with a “c,” so I figured that there was some kind of wordplay going on.

Then it dawned on me. My music recommendation theme this week is ska! It’s a group of music genres with a letter added!

I can’t lie, I felt good about figuring that one out, because I almost never get purples when they’re adding, removing or changing a letter. These ones refer to blues (BLUEST), pop (POPE), rock (ROCKY) and ska (SKAT).

That left the blues for the win. We already know I figured out that connection, more or less.

I feel like this particular puzzle was almost made for me. I love making connections (duh), movies and music. The bike category was less tailored to me, personally, since I barely know how to ride a bike.

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 Thursday’s game if you need them.

P.S. Keeping up with this week’s ska punk theme, I saw this band last year. I never got hugely into Rancid, but I do really like a few of their songs, such as “Ruby Soho” and this one, “Time Bomb.” I find it nearly impossible not to dance to this one a little:

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.