NYT ‘Connections’ Today: Hints And Answers For Friday, February 7

Looking for Thursday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Today: Hints And Answers For Thursday, February 6By Kris Holt

Hey there, gang! Happy Friday. The weekend’s right around the corner.

Five years ago this month, I went on the best and strangest trip of my life. My former and partner and I went to Japan. We planned to be there for a month, but as soon as we got there things started to go awry (for very obvious reasons since it was February 2020). Museums and schools quickly started to close, and the Tokyo subway system was much quieter than we expected. In fact, everywhere we went, it was nowhere close to as busy as we anticipated.

I have a lot of very fond memories of that trip, though, such as the evening we spent at a place called Bar Martha in Tokyo. To this day, it’s my favorite bar in the world. It’s a listening bar in which you cannot speak loudly and photographs are not allowed. The idea is that you enjoy a quiet drink and listen to music on an utterly incredible sound system. It was a sublime experience.

A pipe dream of mine is to open my own listening bar someday, even if the market for such a thing in North America might be more limited. In any case, I love you forever, Bar Martha. I hope to visit you again someday.

Before we begin, I’ve set up a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat about each game (and other topics) with me and other folks. I’m always interested to find out how other people approach the game, so join us! It’s fun.

It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, February 7, 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 for each grid 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...

• BLUE
• VELVET
• RUN
• TIRE
• LEAD
• BALLOON
• ERASER
• HEAD
• BULL
• LAMP
• CROSS
• WISHES
• DIRECT
• GALOSH
• EARRING
• HERRING

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — become a boss or captain
• Green group — (similar) material things
• Blue group — aren't you glad to have a friend like me to help you keep your streak going?
• Purple group — be careful! If you don’t see what's going on here, you might get mad

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 — be in charge of
• Green group — things made of rubber
• Blue group — associated with The Genie in Aladdin
• Purple group — red ____

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 — be in charge of (DIRECT, HEAD, LEAD, RUN)
• Green group — things made of rubber (BALLOON, ERASER, GALOSH, TIRE)
• Blue group — associated with The Genie in Aladdin (BLUE, EARRING, LAMP, WISHES)
• Purple group — red ____ (BULL, CROSS, HERRING, VELVET)

I’m back to winning ways after losing a 23-game streak yesterday. No perfect game today, though. Here’s how I fared:

🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟩🟪🟪
🟪🟩🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩

R.I.P. David Lynch. I appreciate the references to the late, great film director with BLUE VELVET and ERASER HEAD being paired up on the grid (DIRECT was in there as well). It was fun to see HERRING there too given how often we talk about red herrings in this game.

The yellows were easy enough to detect. I then thought that BULL, BALLOON (as in 99 of them in the Nena song), VELVET and HERRING would go together as a group of things associated with red. I was one away, and I swapped out BULL for CROSS. That was another "one away" mistake. Rats.

I decided to change strategy at that point. My mind drew a link between LAMP and WISHES, and that helped me get the blues.

At that point, I could see there were four things made of rubber and four that were linked to red. Purples, then greens got me back to winning ways.

I was thinking of BULL more in terms of red making that animal angry, rather than the energy drink. Having BLUE VELVET on the top line only for VELVET go into a group of red things was a delicious little twist.

Also, Robin Williams' performance as The Genie in Aladdin is absolutely terrific. I miss that man dearly. He was such a gift to humanity.

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 Saturday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I’m going to have to go for a double recommendation today. First up is the title track from Blue Velvet. Tony Bennett was the first to record the song, but the version that's used in Lynch's film is by Bobby Vinton. His recording reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It's a beautiful song, but it's one that Lynch manages to frame perfectly in the construct of his surreal suburban thriller:

Second, here is "99 Red Balloons" by Nena, a truly great '80s song:

Oh, go on then, here's the very fun Goldfinger version too:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love!

If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.