NYT ‘Connections’ Today: Hints And Answers For Friday, January 31

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

ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Today: Hints And Answers For Thursday, January 30By Kris Holt

Hey, everyone! Today marks the 600th edition of Connections and, well, there wasn’t as much trickery as I expected. More on that in a few.

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, January 31, 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...

• SNOOT
• BREAST
• FREE
• CHEST
• BUTTER
• SNOB
• BACK
• EXPERT
• BEAK
• TRUNK
• CRITIC
• CASE
• CONNOISSEUR
• SNOUT
• CRATE
• HONKER

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — put your stuff inside
• Green group — oh, everybody nose this one
• Blue group — aficionados of high culture, perhaps
• Purple group — well, well, well, Lochte here!

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 — storage containers
• Green group — schnozz
• Blue group — ones with discerning tastes
• Purple group — starts of swimming strokes

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 — storage containers (CASE, CHEST, CRATE, TRUNK)
• Green group — schnozz (BEAK, HONKER, SNOOT, SNOUT)
• Blue group — ones with discerning tastes (CONNOISSEUR, CRITIC, EXPERT, SNOB)
• Purple group — starts of swimming strokes (BACK, BREAST, BUTTER, FREE)

Alas, my streak of 15 straight perfect games is over. But the overall streak keeps rolling (just!) and now stands at 18. Here's how I fared:

🟩🟦🟦🟦

🟩🟦🟦🟦

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟨🟪🟩

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟩🟩🟩🟩

After all my worrying over the last few days that this was going to be a tough, streak-breaking game, that wasn't quite the case. "Quite" being the key word. There is a bit of a theme to this one, as many words are references to noses, including SNOOT and BEAK.

I did wonder if SNOOT might go with words like EXPERT, SNOB, CRITIC and CONNOISSEUR. I wasted two lives to that effect (each was one away from a group) before I omitted SNOOT to get the blues.

Another life quickly vanished with a guess of BEAK, CHEST, BACK and BREAST as in parts of a chicken. Not even one away from a group. Uh oh.

It was at that point I got my game face on. Yellows, done. No more messing around.

At that point, the last two groups became clear enough. There were four nose-related words, meaning the others had to be the purples. I figured out the connection there before sending those words home. The greens sealed the deal. Phew.

I figured that if today’s grid wasn’t particularly out there or obscure, at least one of my clues could be. The purple one refers to Ryan Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist in swimming.

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. Sticking with the dance/house music theme for this week, I've thought of a song that aligns with the freedom I now feel sans the pressure I've been putting on myself to maintain my solid run of perfect games.

"Set You Free" by N-Trance is a proper rave song. It has a great intro with that piano track and soaring vocals that drop you in before the beat kicks in. Terrific stuff:

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.