NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Friday, January 3

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

Hey, everyone! How are those New Year’s resolutions shaking out for you so far?

As I mentioned previously, I don’t believe in such resolutions myself, but I do need and want to get into much better shape. I have some ideas on how to do that.

For one thing, I plan to let myself only look at junk on my phone when I’m using my mini step machine. Catching up on movies while on my rowing machine should help motivate me to do both, and I’m going to check out some of the PlayStation VR2 fitness apps.

I’ve got this. So do you if you’re setting out on your own fitness/wellness path.

Before we get started, I’ve started 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 3, 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…

• SINGLE
• STICKER
• BELLY
• BUTTON
• HOLE
• SOLE
• OYSTER
• CLAM
• BUCK
• LUCK
• BALL
• TRUMPET
• MOREL
• ARCH
• SMACKER
• HEEL

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — features of a certain part of the body
• Green group — it’s important to know the value of this to remain grounded
• Blue group — perhaps the life of the party, since they’re fun guy
• Purple group — “noodle” and “shot” would fit in 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 — parts of a foot
• Green group — one dollar
• Blue group — kinds of mushrooms
• Purple group — pot ____

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 — parts of a foot (ARCH, BALL, HEEL, SOLE)
• Green group — one dollar (BUCK, CLAM, SINGLE, SMACKER)
• Blue group — kinds of mushrooms (BUTTON, MOREL, OYSTER, TRUMPET)
• Purple group — pot ____ (BELLY, HOLE, LUCK, STICKER)

Hey, there we go! My first perfect game in quite a while. My overall steak is up to 12. My personal record of 32 is in my sightline. Here’s how I fared:

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟩🟩🟩🟩

Smooth sailing for me today. “Pot” sprang to mind as soon as I saw STICKER and BELLY on the top line. Sure enough, the purples were easy to locate.

The yellows were straightforward and up next. I almost fell into the red herring trap posed by MOREL, OYSTER and CLAM. However, I clocked the mushroom connection just in time. I also figured out the link between the greens before submitting those.

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. In what was just my second trip to the cinema in the last 12 months (for shame, I know), I saw Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic that recasts the singer as a literal performing monkey. That creative decision seemed rather odd at first, but it makes sense and it only takes a minute to get used to.

I enjoyed this film quite a bit! I’ve always liked Williams. His life through the ‘90s and 2000s was very well documented in the British tabloids, so there wasn’t a lot of surprising information here. I thought it dragged on a little too long and there’s lots of standard biopic fare, but it’s very well done and a proper crowdpleaser (heads up, there’s some strong language in the trailer):

Have a great day! Make sure to drink enough water! 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.