NYT ‘Connections’ Hints For Monday, June 9: 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 Sunday’s:

Hey there, Connectors! I hope you had a phenomenal weekend.

Perhaps you know the drill by now. On Mondays, we begin the column with an upbeat song. Hopefully, it’ll help you get moving around, put a smile on your face and lift your spirits.

I don’t know how I’ve made it this long doing recommendations at the end of this column without including a Janelle Monáe song. She’s easily one of the coolest, most talented musicians on the planet and rarely misses. Still, I’m going to go back to one of her earlier hits. “Tightrope” is a funky, soulful song with a great message about maintaining balance, which is something we could all stand to keep in mind:

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, June 9 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…

• PRINT
• GENUS
• RING
• BOOK
• FAMILY
• SLID
• ORDER
• SAVE
• RESERVE
• PASTE
• GOO
• CREW
• MAZING
• REQUEST
• SYNDICATE
• QUIT

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — quick access to important functions
• Green group — get it sorted beforehand
• Blue group — where you might find soldiers, kumiin, chapitos and mountain lords
• Purple group — take something away to prove your skills with seven characters

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 — QUIT
• Green group — BOOK
• Blue group — RING
• Purple group — SLID

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Today’s Connections groups are…

• Yellow group — keyboard shortcut commands
• Green group — secure in advance
• Blue group — crime organization
• Purple group — Spelling Bee ranks minus 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 — keyboard shortcut commands (PASTE, PRINT, QUIT, SAVE)
• Green group — secure in advance (BOOK, ORDER, REQUEST, RESERVE)
• Blue group — crime organization (CREW, FAMILY, RING, SYNDICATE)
• Purple group — Spelling Bee ranks minus a letter (GENUS, GOO, MAZING, SLID)

MAZING instantly stood out to me as “amazing” minus the “A.” GENUS (genius) and GOO (good) seemed to align with that. It took me a little while to realize that SLID could refer to “solid.”

I don’t play Spelling Bee, so the reference flew over my head. I just thought they all related to positive words. In any case, I was glad to get the purples.

SYNDICATE was my entry point into the blues. I’m looking forward that new origin-story Mafia game in a few months, for what it’s worth.

I drew a mental link between REQUEST and RESERVE to get the greens. The yellows were straightforward too. Happy with how this one went!

I think that my sixth- or seventh-ever reverse rainbow. Either way, it takes my streak up to 104. For the record, here’s how I fared:

🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨

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. Talking Heads put out a new video for “Psycho Killer” 48 years after the song was released. Excuse me??? The video stars the brilliant Saoirse Ronan and has the great director Mike Mills behind the camera. An all-timer of a song now has a pretty swell music video to go with it. Big fan of this:

Also, if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend checking out American Utopia, a live recording of a Broadway performance by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and his collaborators. This is a truly great concert film and performance piece. I found it quite moving:

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.