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This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s? Check out the Connections hint for Wednesday 18th March!

Looking for some Connections hints to help with today’s puzzle on Tuesday, 17th March? Don’t stress! It’s not over until 12:00am, and with the help of our Connections puzzle, you have everything you need to make it in time!

Whether you need a gentle nudge in the right direction or a full answer or two, check out our guide below. Your streak is safe with us.

How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words “Hook”, “Nana”, “Peter”, and “Wendy” are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, “Action”, “Ballpark”, “Go”, and “Stick” are all words which commonly come just before the word “Figure”. These are the kinds of Connections you’ll need to make to solve the puzzle.

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together – but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day’s Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

Click here to play today’s Connections puzzle!

Connections hint: Today’s Connections words

Below you’ll find various hints for today’s Connections. Each of the below hints will make it progressively easier for you to solve today’s puzzle. First we’ll reveal the words in today’s Connections, followed by our Connections hint for each group. Then we’ll reveal one word inside each group, followed by the groups themselves; and finally, at the bottom of this page, we’ll reveal the answers to today’s Connections puzzle. Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

• HOT WATER
• LIGHTNING
• ARROW
• BALLOON
• BIND
• JAM
• KEY
• KITE
• PICKLE
• PITCH
• ROCKET
• SCALE
• TEA BAG
• TONE
• WIND
• YO-YO

Connections hint for Tuesday 17th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow hint: Sticky situations.
• Green hint: The building blocks of music.
• Blue hint: They’re hanging on by a thread.
• Purple hint: Images of speed.
• Extra hint 1: Think of language mechanics.
• Extra hint 2: Each group except blue has at least one word containing the letter ‘O’

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

• Yellow: Pickle
• Green: Tone
• Blue: Kite
• Purple: Lightning

Spoiler warning! Today’s Connections groups are revealed just below!

Connections hints: All of today’s Connections groups

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today’s Connections puzzle, below we’ll reveal the four correct Connections groups – the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

• Yellow: Metaphors for Trouble
• Green: Music Theory Concepts
• Blue: Things With Strings
• Purple: Metaphors for Quickness

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today’s puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.

Spoiler warning! Today’s Connections answer lies ahead!

Connections answer today

Here is the answer to today’s Connections puzzle on Tuesday, 17th March:

• Yellow: Metaphors for Trouble (Bind, Hot Water, Jam, Pickle)
• Green: Music Theory Concepts (Key, Pitch, Scale, Tone)
• Blue: Things With Strings (Balloon, Kite, Tea Bag, Yo-Yo)
• Purple: Metaphors for Quickness (Arrow, Lightning, Rocket, Wind)

This puzzle was a clever mix of metaphor and mechanics! The purple and yellow groups sent me straight back to my high school English class—after I came back from the fridge, that is. No one can mention pickles and jam without me getting hungry!

The blue group also had me in a bind. It was hard not to want to group tea bags in with the pickles and jam, but, of course, those pesky strings were the answer! Once that clicked for me, the rest fell into place.

Congratulations if you got today’s Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn’t succeed today, don’t worry – a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!

Read this next

• NYT Connections hint (Wed, 18 Mar)
• NYT Connections hint (Mon, 16 Mar)
• NYT Connections hint (Sun, 15 Mar)