NYT 'Connections' Hints Today: Clues, Answers For Saturday, April 12

Hey, folks! Welcome to the weekend. I hope it’s an excellent one for you.

Regular readers will be aware that I’m very much looking forward to the arrival of the Nintendo Switch 2, for personal and professional reasons. So I was dismayed that Nintendo delayed pre-orders in the U.S. and (more relevantly to me) Canada.

The pre-orders were supposed to start in the countries this week, but the company delayed that process so it can figure out how to handle the tariffs the U.S. has imposed on most countries. Nintendo makes its consoles in several countries in Asia. A colleague suggested that the company also delayed pre-orders in Canada to help prevent scalping.

Sure, there are bigger issues going on in the world, in large part because of these tariffs. But the comfort of knowing that I had a Switch 2 already locked in for the launch window was something I was excited about. It was a bummer not to be able to take care of that this week.

However, just as news of the pre-order delay in Canada came through, I remembered that pre-orders were opening up in other countries. So I quickly secured a bundle from the U.K. Sure, shipping is a little pricey, but that’s fine. Actually, I calculated that even after that, factoring the exchange rate, the console is going to be about $15 less than buying it in Canada!

Well, at least before import fees and duties. Those are going to sting.

I’ll still try to secure a Switch 2 pre-order in Canada when those do open up. But, for now, at least I have a backup plan. Phew.

Before we begin, I’ve set up a discussion group for NYT Connections and this column on Discord. We have a great little community over there and we chat about more than NYT games. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot.

It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up since I don’t look at the comments or Twitter much.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Saturday, April 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 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...

• SIN
• SEC
• SUN
• TAN
• FLASH
• BOTS
• FALL
• CAME
• BIT
• BUCK
• KEN
• STRAY
• NET
• JIFF
• ERR
• SPUR

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — just a moment
• Green group — ooh, you messed up
• Blue group — bull and hawk would fit in here
• Purple group — like "mad," "ben" and "gab"

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 — short period of time
• Green group — do wrong
• Blue group — N.B.A. player
• Purple group — starts of African countries

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 — short period of time (BIT, FLASH, JIFF, SEC)
• Green group — do wrong (ERR, FALL, SIN, STRAY)
• Blue group — N.B.A. player (BUCK, NET, SPUR, SUN)
• Purple group — starts of African countries (BOTS, CAME, KEN, TAN)

A perfect game extends my overall streak to 46 wins in a row. Here’s how I fared :

????
????
????
????

Does anyone else's heart immediately sink as soon as they see that the grid is full or short words? Or is it just me?

Thankfully, after a few moments of thought, the yellows and greens fell into place quickly. (You can put "back in a" before any of the yellows and they all work).

My rudimentary knowledge of American sports did not fail me today. I was able to detect the blues after some thought.

That left the purples for a regular rainbow (getting all the groups in order with no mistakes). I don't think I would have figured that one out by myself.

The countries being referred to here are Botswana (BOTS), Cameroon (CAME), Kenya (KEN) and Tanzania (TAN).

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 Sunday’s game if you need them.

P.S. The best new thing I learned about this week in a walk is another daily puzzle game called Bracket City. It hits that same part of my brain as Connections (and hey, maybe I should start a column about that one too??). I already enjoy it more than Wordle, Strands and Quordle.

I wrote about the game for Engadget this week, so I won’t repeat myself too much here. But trust me when I say that Bracket City is very fun. A few of us in our Discord are already super into it, so come join us and chat about it!

Oh, and there's a theme song too, which fittingly went live on April 1:

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. Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.

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