Stuck on today’s puzzle? You’re not alone. Mashable Connections hint today searches spike every morning as players look for a nudge before their streak breaks. This guide gives you today’s NYT Connections hints, the category names, and the full answer for puzzle #1,199.
Spoiler warning: the answers sit further down the page. Scroll slowly if you want to solve it yourself first.
What Is NYT Connections
NYT Connections is a daily word puzzle from The New York Times. The game gives you 16 words. Your job is to sort them into four hidden groups of four. Each group shares a theme, but the trick is that some words look like they belong to more than one group.
Who Created Connections
Wyna Liu, the NYT’s puzzle editor, built Connections. It launched in beta in June 2023 and joined the main NYT Games app soon after. It quickly became the second-most-played game the Times publishes, trailing only Wordle.
How Connections Works
You get four guesses’ worth of mistakes. Miss four times, and the puzzle locks you out, revealing the answers anyway. Each correct group disappears from the board, which makes the remaining words easier to read once the clutter clears.
Here’s a light nudge for each color group. No direct answers yet, just a push in the right direction.
Yellow hint: Think about pointing words — the kind you’d use to gesture at something nearby or far away.
Green hint: These words all describe adding a little extra polish to something plain.
Blue hint: Picture a customer satisfaction survey with multiple-choice boxes to tick.
Purple hint: Strip the accent marks off some drink names, and you’ll land here.
Today’s Connections Category Hints
Still stuck? Here are the actual category topics, without giving away the words themselves.
Yellow Category Hint
The yellow group today is built around demonstrative pronouns — grammar terms most people learned in school and forgot.
Green Category Hint
The green group covers embellishment. Think decoration, detail, and flair added to something basic.
Blue Category Hint
The blue group lists responses you’d pick on a multiple-choice survey, the kind with agree-to-disagree scales.
Purple Category Hint
The purple group is the trickiest. It’s beverage names with their accent marks removed, which turns familiar French words into plain English lookalikes.
Today’s Mashable Connections Answer
Here is the full breakdown for puzzle #1,199, dated September 22, 2026.
Yellow Group: Demonstratives
This, That, These, Those
Green Group: Embellishment
Accent, Detail, Flourish, Touch
Blue Group: Options on a Multiple Choice Survey
Agree, Disagree, Neutral, Other
Purple Group: Beverages With Acute Accents Removed
Cafe, Patron, Rose, The
This purple group is a classic Liu-style trap. Strip the accent marks from café, patrón, rosé, and thé, and you’re left with everyday English words that fit right into the other groups. That’s the red herring baked into the puzzle.
How I Solved Today’s Connections Puzzle
The overlap between yellow and purple made this one tricky. This, that, and the all looked like they belonged together at first glance. Locking in the survey responses first — agree, disagree, neutral, other — cleared enough of the board to spot the accent trick underneath.
Once the beverage group clicked, the rest fell into place fast. The embellishment words — accent, detail, flourish, touch — were the last four standing.
Yesterday’s Mashable Connections Answers
Reading this after midnight or from a different time zone? Here’s puzzle #1,198 for reference.
Green, Ways to attract fish: Chum, Fly, Spinner, Worm
Blue, Chess verbs: Capture, Castle, Check, Mate
Purple, Starts of composers’ names: Beet, Brah, Chop, Viva
How to Play NYT Connections: Tips and Strategies
Solving Connections gets easier once you know the puzzle’s patterns. Here’s what actually helps.
Start With the Obvious Groups
Yellow and green groups are usually the most straightforward. Scan for synonyms or clearly related items first, and lock those in before touching the harder colors.
Use Process of Elimination
Once a group clears the board, the remaining words become easier to read. Fewer options mean fewer false connections, so save your guesses for when the board is smaller.
Watch for Red Herrings
The puzzle often plants a word that seems to fit two categories at once. Today’s the, this, and that overlap is a textbook example. Don’t lock in a guess until you’re confident about all four words.
Think About Wordplay and Hidden Patterns
Some groups hinge on homophones, missing letters, or accent marks, like today’s purple group. Others use fill-in-the-blank logic, where every word pairs with the same missing word before or after it.
Know the Color Difficulty System
Yellow is the easiest. Green is slightly harder. Blue often needs trivia knowledge. Purple relies on wordplay or obscure links. Knowing this order helps you decide where to start.
The puzzle is free to play once a day on the NYT Games website and app. A new puzzle drops at midnight Eastern Time, and each one gets a new number.
More Daily Puzzle Hints
Connections isn’t the only NYT game worth checking daily. Wordle hints, NYT Strands solutions, and the NYT Mini Crossword all follow a similar daily hint format, and many players solve all three back to back each morning.
FAQ’s
What is today’s Mashable Connections hint?
Today’s hints point to demonstrative pronouns, decorative words, survey responses, and beverage names missing their accent marks. The full category names and answers are listed above.
What are today’s NYT Connections answers?
The four groups for puzzle #1,199 are Demonstratives (This, That, These, Those), Embellishment (Accent, Detail, Flourish, Touch), Options on a Multiple Choice Survey (Agree, Disagree, Neutral, Other), and Beverages With Acute Accents Removed (Cafe, Patron, Rose, The).
How many mistakes are allowed in Connections?
Players get four mistakes total. After the fourth wrong guess, the puzzle ends and reveals the remaining answers.
What do the colors mean in NYT Connections?
Yellow marks the easiest group, green is slightly harder, blue usually needs trivia knowledge, and purple is the hardest, often built on wordplay or hidden patterns.
Who is Wyna Liu, the Connections editor?
Wyna Liu is the puzzle editor at The New York Times who created Connections. She oversees the daily puzzle’s themes and difficulty curve.
Does Mashable post Connections hints every day?
Sites that cover Connections, including Mashable, typically publish a new hints page daily, timed to the puzzle’s midnight Eastern reset.
Is NYT Connections free to play?
Yes. The daily puzzle is free for anyone with an NYT account. Access to the full archive of past puzzles usually requires a Games subscription.
How do I find yesterday’s Connections answers?
Yesterday’s answers are listed in the section above. Most hint pages, including this one, keep a rolling record of the previous day’s puzzle for readers in different time zones.
Conclusion
Connections rewards patience more than speed. Start with the group you’re most sure about, watch for words that seem to fit two categories, and save the trickiest guesses for last. Check back tomorrow for the next Mashable Connections hint today and keep that streak alive.
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