The New York Times Connections puzzle, a daily word game that challenges players to group 16 words into four themed categories, continues to captivate puzzle enthusiasts with its clever wordplay and intricate associations. Edited by crossword constructor Wyna Liu, each puzzle offers a unique blend of straightforward and abstract connections, making it a delightful brain teaser for players of all skill levels. Today’s puzzle, released on June 18, 2025, is no exception, featuring a mix of accessible and challenging categories that test both logic and creativity. In this article, we’ll provide detailed hints to guide you through solving today’s puzzle without spoiling the answers outright, along with strategies to enhance your Connections gameplay. For those seeking the full solution, we’ll include a carefully marked spoiler section at the end.

Understanding the NYT Connections Puzzle

Before diving into today’s hints, let’s briefly recap how Connections works. The game presents a 4×4 grid of 16 words, and your task is to organize them into four groups of four, each sharing a common theme or relationship. The groups are color-coded by difficulty:

Yellow: The easiest group, often with a clear and concrete connection.
Green: Moderately challenging, requiring slightly more nuanced thinking.
Blue: More difficult, often involving abstract or less obvious associations.
Purple: The toughest group, typically relying on wordplay, cultural references, or complex relationships.

You have up to four incorrect guesses before the game ends, and a correct group is removed from the grid with its color and theme revealed. The puzzle’s design encourages careful analysis, as some words may seem to fit multiple categories, creating deliberate red herrings. Today’s puzzle, has been noted as having particularly tricky blue and purple categories, so let’s explore the hints to help you navigate the grid.
Hints for Today’s Connections Puzzle
To preserve the challenge, we’ll provide hints for each group in order of difficulty, from yellow to purple, without revealing the exact words or category titles. These clues are designed to nudge you toward the connections while leaving the satisfaction of solving to you. If you need more specific guidance, we’ll offer additional tips in the strategy section below.
Yellow Group: Qualities of a Rainy Day

Hint: Think about the sensory experience of standing outside during a storm. What adjectives describe the weather?
Additional Clue: These words are all characteristics you might associate with a gloomy, wet afternoon—think about how you’d describe the atmosphere to someone indoors.
Why It’s Easy: This group is straightforward because the words are common descriptors tied to a familiar experience. They’re likely to stand out if you visualize a specific weather scenario.
Watch Out: One or two words might seem like they could fit into another category related to emotions or moods, but focus on their weather-specific meanings.

Green Group: Squarely

Hint: Consider words that imply precision or directness, as if hitting a target right in the center.
Additional Clue: These terms are often used to describe something done with exact alignment or unmistakable accuracy, like landing a perfect shot.
Why It’s Moderate: The connection is less tangible than the yellow group, requiring you to think about how these words function in phrases or contexts where precision is key.
Watch Out: Some words might feel like they could belong to a group about correctness or truth, but the theme here is specifically about hitting something directly.

Blue Group: Contents of a Pod

Hint: Imagine a container that holds something specific—whether organic, technological, or even futuristic. What’s inside?
Additional Clue: The “pod” could be literal (like in nature) or metaphorical (like in science fiction). Think broadly about what a pod might enclose.
Why It’s Challenging: This category requires you to make a conceptual leap, as the items inside the pods come from diverse contexts. You’ll need to identify the common thread of being “contained.”
Watch Out: One word might seem to fit a different category, perhaps related to food or technology, so double-check its association with a pod-like structure.

Purple Group: Body Part Plus a Starting Letter

Hint: This group involves a bit of wordplay—think about anatomical terms combined with a specific letter to form new words.
Additional Clue: Each word is a body part with a single letter added to the beginning, creating a valid English word that means something else entirely.
Why It’s Difficult: The purple group often relies on linguistic tricks, and this one is no exception. You’ll need to spot the pattern of letter addition and recognize the resulting words.
Watch Out: The body parts might not be immediately obvious, and the added letter creates words that may seem unrelated at first glance. Look for subtle spelling patterns.

Strategies for Solving Today’s Puzzle

If you’re finding today’s puzzle tricky, here are some general strategies tailored to puzzle #738, drawing on insights from Connections gameplay and expert tips:

Start with the Obvious: The yellow group (qualities of a rainy day) is the easiest, so scan the grid for words that immediately evoke a stormy scene. Grouping these first will reduce the grid’s complexity.

Look for Outliers: The purple group’s wordplay makes its words less likely to fit other categories cleanly. If you spot a word that feels oddly specific or doesn’t align with other themes, it might belong here. Test combinations by adding or removing a letter to see if a body part emerges.

Think Contextually for Blue: The blue group (contents of a pod) is abstract, so consider multiple meanings of “pod.” For example, think about pods in nature (like plants), technology (like coffee machines), or even pop culture (like sci-fi vehicles). This broad approach will help you spot the connection.

Use the Shuffle Feature: If you’re stuck, shuffle the grid to rearrange the words. This can break your fixation on incorrect groupings and reveal new patterns.

Avoid Red Herrings: Some words in today’s puzzle, like those in the blue group, might seem to fit a food-related or tech-related category. Double-check by ensuring all four words align with the “pod” theme.

Test and Reflect: Submit a group you’re confident in, and if it’s correct, use the revealed theme to inform your next guesses. If you make a mistake, analyze why—were you too focused on one interpretation of a word? You have four mistakes before game over, so use them wisely.

Community and Resources

The Connections community is vibrant, with players sharing their solve grids and strategies on platforms like Reddit and the New York Times Connections Companion page. For today’s puzzle, you can join the conversation at the Connections Companion for June 18, 2025, to compare your score with others or seek emotional support if the purple group stumps you. Additionally, resources like the Connections Bot offer post-game analysis, giving you a numeric score and tracking your progress over time.
If you’re new to Connections or want to hone your skills, check out the New York Times Games app or website for access to past puzzles (with a subscription) or explore fan-made puzzles on Reddit’s r/NYTConnections. Sites like wordfinder.yourdictionary.com and capitalizemytitle.com also provide daily hints, though be cautious of spoilers.
Spoiler Section: Full Answers for Puzzle #738
Warning: The following section contains the complete answers for today’s Connections puzzle #738. Only proceed if you’re ready to see the solutions.
For those who’ve tried their best or simply want confirmation, here are the four groups, their themes, and the corresponding words, as reported by reliable sources covering today’s puzzle.

Yellow Group: Qualities of a Rainy DayWords: COLD, GRAY, WET, WINDYThis group is the easiest, as these adjectives vividly describe a typical rainy day’s atmosphere.

Green Group: SquarelyWords: DEAD, EXACTLY, RIGHT, SMACKThese words relate to precision or hitting something directly, as in “dead center” or “smack in the middle.”

Blue Group: Contents of a PodWords: ASTRONAUT, COFFEE, PEA, WHALEThis category includes items found in various types of pods, from a space capsule (astronaut) to a coffee pod, a pea pod, or even a whale pod (a group of whales).

Purple Group: Body Part Plus a Starting LetterWords: BARM, LEAR, RANKLE, SHIPEach word is formed by adding a letter to a body part: B+ARM (barm, a yeasty foam), L+EAR (lear, a poetic term), R+ANKLE (rankle, to irritate), and S+HIP (ship, a vessel).