Are you looking for tips and answers about Saturday’s Connections instead? You can find them here:

ForbesTips and answers on today’s NYT’s “Connections” for Saturday, September 7From

Hi guys! I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I’m very glad I made an appointment to get my hair cut yesterday as an opportunity came up that I may discuss in a few days. Stay tuned…

Today’s NYT Connections Clues and answers coming soon.

How to play connections

Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. Every day at midnight you get a new puzzle. You can NYT Website or game app.

You are presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to sort these into four groups of four by finding the connections between them. The groups can be things like clickable items, names of participants in research studies, or words preceded by a body part.

Each puzzle has only one solution. You must be careful with words that could fit into more than one category. You can mix the words up to see if there are any connections between them.

Each group is color-coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to understand, blue and green are in between, and the purple group is usually the most difficult. The purple group often includes wordplay.

Choose four words that you think go together and press submit. If you guess wrong, you lose a life. When you’re close to having a correct group, a message may appear letting you know that you’re one word away from the correct group, but you still need to figure out which one to swap out.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with some tips. And if you’re really having trouble, today’s Connections Answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, you can easily share the results with your friends on social media and group chats.

What are today’s connection tips?

Scroll slowly! Immediately after the instructions for each of today’s Connections Groups, I will tell you which groups they are without immediately telling you which words belong in these groups.

Today’s 16 words are…

• FROST
• BEACH
• PUMP
• POPE
• RACING
• BISHOP
• PETSHOP
• POUND
• WINTER HARDY
• HIT
• BEFORE
• BAKE
• THROWING
• BAD
• PREHEAT
• PASTOR

And the clues for today’s groups are:

• Yellow Group – Instructions for making a sweet treat
• Green Group – (for clarification: none of the green words are mentioned in the title of this song)

• Blue group – religious position
• Purple group – groups of young men, perhaps

What are today’s Connections groups?

Need additional help?

Be warned: We are starting to Spoiler area.

Today’s groups are …

• Yellow group – verbs in a cake recipe
• Green group – what a heart does when excited
• Blue Group – ecclesiastical titles
• Purple Group – ____ Boys

What are today’s Connections answers?

Warning, spoilers! Don’t scroll down until you’re ready to see today’s Connections Answer.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections Answers are …

• Yellow group – verbs in a cake recipe (BAKE, BEAT, TEMPER, PREHEAT)
• Green group – what a heart does when it is excited (PADDLING, PUMPING, RACING, POLLEN)
• Blue group – ecclesiastical titles (BISHOP, PASTOR, POPE, PRIOR)
• Purple Group – ____ Boys (BAD, BEACH, HARDY, PET SHOP)

I’m back on the winning track, but only after breaking a two-day losing streak yesterday.

I initially guessed THROB, BEAT, POUND and PUMP, which put me one away from the greens, but I decided to look elsewhere for my first group. The blues were then clear to me, and when I saw PET SHOP and BEACH right next to each other, the purple group was clearly visible.

Then I guessed FROST, PREHEAT, BAKE and POUND, which again left me missing a word from one group. But by process of elimination I was able to find the yellow ones first and then the green ones.

That’s all for today Connections Hints and answers. If you need hints and the solution for Monday’s game, be sure to check out my blog.

PS: Since the Beach Boys are featured in today’s game, I feel compelled to include my absolute favorite song today. I’ve featured an incredible solo guitar cover of “God Only Knows” in the past, but now it’s time for the original.

It’s impossible for me to listen to it without at least tears coming. It’s so beautiful. Put on headphones, close your eyes and take in this absolute masterpiece: