NYT ‘Connections’ Hints For Tuesday, June 17: Clues And Answers For Today’s Game

Each day’s game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before we get to today’s Connections hints and answers, here are Monday’s:

Hey there, Connectors! I hope your week is off to a lovely start.

My high school is closing forever in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be knocked down and merged with another school on a new campus.

It’s sad in some respects. I spent six years of my life in that place. My sister and mother both went there. I forged some of my closest friendships there too.

The school held a couple of open days for former students (well, we were called pupils) over the last couple of months. Someone filmed the tour and posted it online in a private group. I watched the whole thing and saw a couple of my buddies in the background.

Honestly, I can see why the building’s being demolished. It’s very dated. Save for digital screens in place of blackboards in some classrooms and a new building with changing rooms, barely anything had changed.

It was a big hit of nostalgia, of course, to see rooms where I had spent so much of my childhood. Seeing the drama studio one last time put a smile on my face – switching from biology to drama as a 13-year-old was one of the most important and best decisions of my life, but that’s another story for another time.

I’ll miss the old place a bit. My high school years were mostly positive and I have a lot of fond memories, especially the times my friends and I performed in talent shows.

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 Tuesday, June 17 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 our hints 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…

• FIGHT
• QUIT
• RESOLVE
• FLIGHT
• TOUR
• FREEZE
• MARIONETTE
• SPIRIT
• FAWN
• HOTEL
• GRIT
• MOUSE
• TIMEOUT
• ELEPHANT
• GLITCH
• CAR

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• 🟨 Yellow group — trip planning considerations
• 🟩 Green group — mental and/or physical fortitude
• 🟦 Blue group — here’s hoping none of these happen right here, right now!
• 🟪 Purple group — well-known figures you might find on Main Street, USA

One Word For Each Connections Group

Need some extra help?

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

Let’s take a look at one word for each group.

Today’s Connections word hints are…

• 🟨 Yellow group — CAR
• 🟩 Green group — SPIRIT
• 🟦 Blue group — FREEZE
• 🟪 Purple group — FAWN

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Today’s Connections groups are…

• 🟨 Yellow group — things to book for a vacation
• 🟩 Green group — mettle
• 🟦 Blue group — bad things for a website to do
• 🟪 Purple group — figures in classic Disney animated films

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 — things to book for a vacation (CAR, FLIGHT, HOTEL, TOUR)
• 🟩 Green group — mettle (FIGHT, GRIT, RESOLVE, SPIRIT)
• 🟦 Blue group — bad things for a website to do (FREEZE, GLITCH, QUIT, TIMEOUT)
• 🟪 Purple group — figures in classic Disney animated films (ELEPHANT, FAWN, MARIONETTE, MOUSE)

I lucked into the purples. I figured that ELEPHANT, FAWN and MOUSE were all animals with large ears. The universe drew my attention to MARIONETTE — something was calling it to me at least. So I tried my luck and got the toughest group.

They refer to Dumbo (ELEPHANT), Bambi (FAWN), Pinocchio (MARIONETTE) and either The Great Mouse Detective or Fantasia (MOUSE). Mickey Mouse was only featured in one segment of Fantasia, and (as best I can tell) the only proper feature-length film in which he is the protagonist is The Three Musketeers, alongside Goofy and Donald Duck.

The grid then bunched all of the greens together on one side, which was super handy. From there, the yellows were pretty clear. Still, I submitted the blues first. Not a huge fan of that group. It seems pretty nebulous.
That’s win 112 in a row for your pal, and I got there with a perfect game. Here’s the grid:

🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨

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 Wednesday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I don’t play Spelling Bee, one of the other NYT Games, in large part because I am very bad at games like that, Scrabble and so on. I’m not sure why!

We did have a Spelling Bee-related group in Connections the other day though, which reminded me of the very funny New Zealand panel show Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee (there’s an Australian version now too). It’s a comedic take on a spelling bee, with lots of silly rules. There are tons of clips on YouTube. I particularly enjoy this one, in large part because Rose Matafeo is just great in everything she appears in:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and others! 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.