NYT Connections Answers Explained: Thursday, July 23

How today's NYT Connections answers and red herrings fit together.

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Note: Make sure to complete today’s NYT Connections before reading further! We’ll be getting into spoilers for today’s game pretty quickly. If you need some help to complete the grid, you can find my NYT Connections hints and answers column for today via my author page.

Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to my deeper dive into today’s Connections answers. The idea behind this is to help clear things up for anyone who isn’t sure how today’s groups fit together.

If I’ve missed any red herrings or misunderstood something, let me know via email or on Discord. I don’t typically look at X or check the comments here.

I’m going to assume that you’ve already beaten today’s game. We’re going straight into spoiler territory here. So, consider this your one and only warning.

Here are today’s NYT Connections answers explained (and any red herrings I spot) for Thursday, July 23:

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 spherical things (BASEBALL, GLOBE, MARBLE, ORANGE)

ORANGE initially tripped me up because I thought it was a reference to the color, not the fruit. I think we’re set for our explanation otherwise, thanks to the category title.

Connections – Green Group

🟩 in an anxious state (EXCITED, FEBRILE, FRENETIC, INTENSE)

I wasn’t quite sure about the meaning of FEBRILE, but it was the only word that seemed to make sense with the others that I had left. It means "related to fever" or, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, “extremely active, or too excited, imaginative, or emotional.”

Connections – Blue Group

🟦 parts of an airport (APRON, HANGAR, RUNWAY, TERMINAL)

In terms of airports, you may know the APRON better as the tarmac. It’s where planes park, fuel up, load, unload and are boarded and maintained.

A HANGAR is a building where planes are stored, in part to protect them from the elements. They are also often repaired here.

The RUNWAY is the long strip of land where planes take off and land. A TERMINAL is a building where passengers check in, go through security/customs and board or deboard a plane.

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 ending in geometry terms (APPOINT, DEPLANE, FELINE, JANGLE)

These refer to:

• APPOINT > point
• DEPLANE > plane (i.e. a flat, two-dimensional surface)
• FELINE > line
• JANGLE > angle

Connections – Red Herrings

The red herring caught me out. I thought I was so smart for spotting JANGLE, FEBRILE, MARBLE and APRON. They each start with an abbreviation for the first four months of the year – January, February, March, April. But no, that was a red herring. And Connections humbled me today.

DEPLANE can also refer to an airport, as in to disembark from an aircraft.

If you’d like to chat about today’s game of Connections and just about anything else with me and a very lovely group of people, you can do just that in our Discord community. We’d love for you to hang out with us.

I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes.