Youll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase.

Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common.

Select four items and hit the Submit button.

If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed.

(Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.)

If your guess was incorrect, youll get a chance to have another go.

You win when youve correctly identified all four groups.

But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.

Expect to see overlapping groups.

So dont hit submit until youve confirmed that your group of four containsonlythose four things.

If youre stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to havenoconnection to the others.

Another way to win when youre stuck is, obviously, to read a few helpful hints.

Below, Ill give you some oblique hints at todays Connections answers.

And further down the page, Ill reveal the themes and the answers.

Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Does todays Connections game require any special knowledge?

Nope, these are all pretty straightforward, common words.

(In which case, why not try our own Allie Reinmannscharcuterie-board-friendly riffon the classic?)

Green category - Heres hoping that you get all of these right!

Blue category - Everything here has taken some minor damage.

Does todays Connections game involve any wordplay?

This one is purple, as youd expect, and its a fill-in-the-blank.

That is, each of the four words is part of a two-word phrase: ____ [something].

The [something] is the same for all four words.

Youll see what I mean.

BEWARE: Spoilers and answers follow for todays Connections puzzle!

Ready to learn the answers to todays Connections puzzle?

I give them all away below.

What are the yellow words in todays Connections?

The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward.

What are the green words in todays Connections?

The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest.

What are the blue words in todays Connections?

The blue grouping is the second-hardest.

What are the purple words in todays Connections?

The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest.

Crackerjack is a phrase indicating great skill, or the popcorn-and-peanut treat traditionally sold at baseball games.

Flapjacks are either pancakes or, if youre in Europe, a snack like a granola bar.

And a lumberjack is, of course, a person who cuts down trees for a living.

But then I saw RIGHT and realized I had too many for a group.

So I used my crutch of writing down possible groupings.

There were a bunch of foods: APPLE, CHIP, CRACKER, WING, POPPER.

I didnt consider FRY here because I was thinking of it as a verb.

That was the first group I submitted, and I got it right.

(NACHOs arent fried, but they felt like they belonged.)

FRY was the singular of fries, and the theme turned out to be appetizers in the singular.

Finally, I had that aha moment for the fill-in-the-blank: APPLEjack, CRACKERjack, LUMBERjack, FLAPjack.

Bingo, yes, correct, I got them all right.