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 retry.

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?

There are some references to old TV shows, and to a modern video game franchise.

A CLEAVER is alarge, square-bladed knife for chopping through food such as meat.

A TANNER is another occupation that we see more often these days in proper names than in job postings.

Tanning is the process oftreating animal skins to make leather.

Green category - Show some backbone.

Blue category - Peaches, peaches…

Purple category - Lets sit down and watch something.

Does todays Connections game involve any wordplay?

Some proper names are mixed in with the ordinary nouns, so keep an eye out for that.

Otherwise, theres nothing too tricky in the way the categories are tied together.

Ready to hear the answers?

Keep scrolling if you want a little more help.

BEWARE: Spoilers follow for todays Connections puzzle!

Were about to give away some of the answers.

Scroll slowly if you dont want the whole thing spoiled.

(The full solution is a bit further down.)

What are the ambiguous words in todays Connections?

What are the categories in todays Connections?

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.

How I solved todays Connections

Look, I know my taxonomy.

DINOSAUR could arguably be in that grouping, but the way dinosaurs are classified is not quite as straightforward.

In fact, when I saw DINOSAUR and PRINCESS, I couldnt un-see them as elements of Mario games.

MUSHROOM and PLUMBER rounded out the list.

Rather than puzzling that out, I looked at PARTRIDGE, which is not exactly a commonly-discussed bird.

As soon as I thought of the Partridge Family, Archie BUNKER and Beaver CLEAVER jumped out at me.