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NYT Connections Hints Today (#935)—Clues and Answers for Thursday, January 1

I haven’t seen you since last year! It’s 2026, and it’s time to keep moving forward with stacks of NYT Connections hints, solutions, and tips. If you’ve burst into 2026 with a desire to keep your NYT Connections streak running, I’m here to help you achieve that resolution. Below, you’ll find the solutions for today’s puzzle.

Let us know in the comments below what your resolutions are for 2026 and how you plan to hold yourself to them!

What is NYT Connections?

It would be remiss of me not to give a little foundational backstory before leaping into today’s NYT Connections clues and hints.

In June 2023, NYT Connections emerged as yet another game in the ever-growing New York Times lineup. This title soared immediately, and it’s easy to see why. As a free-to-play, accessible New York Times game, NYT Connections is available to users worldwide and can be played on either desktop devices or via a mobile app.

Playing NYT Connections on your commute or while waiting for a coffee is a fantastic way to kill a few minutes.

But how do you play NYT Connections?

It’s relatively simple, and that’s why it’s the best New York Times game, in my opinion.

The NYT team will provide you with a grid of 16 words once a day. The only task left up to you is to sort those words into four groups of four by finding their commonalities. Every NYT Connections puzzle has just one solution, and some words might have a double meaning, so it can sometimes be tricky to figure out the answers.

It’s also important to stress that the words are color-coded: yellow, blue, green, and purple. That’s in order of difficulty from least to most difficult, too.

What’s critical here is that you get four guesses every day, and if you use those, your NYT Connections answers for today will be out of reach, as it’ll be game over.

Today’s NYT Connections Hints (January 1)

If you want to figure out today’s NYT Connections clues without getting the answers outright, I’ll start with the words themselves. Perhaps just seeing the words here will prompt your brain to take action, and you’ll spot the trends immediately.

Here are the NYT Connections words from today’s puzzle, #935:

  • SHUCK
  • SCOTCH
  • HEAD
  • RAT
  • CURSE
  • SKIN
  • NUT
  • FLY
  • HOUND
  • FINGERS
  • SPELL
  • SHELL
  • CHARM
  • BUFF
  • PEEL
  • HEX

And here are the hints I can offer for today’s NYT Connections:

  • Yellow Think about the small, concentrated forms of supernatural influence — the kind of mystical actions that show up in fairy tales, fantasy novels, or folklore.
  • GreenImagine you’re prepping food in a kitchen — or working with anything that has a natural outer layer.
  • BlueThese are the words you attach to someone who is REALLY into a topic — the kind of person who knows every detail, every fact, every obscure bit of trivia.
  • PurplePicture the word “butter” followed by another word to form a familiar phrase or compound.

Here’s the final warning before we get to the NYT Connections answers for today, January 1:

Are you sure you want to scroll further?

Very well!

NYT Connections Answers for Today, January 1 (#935)

If you want to jump straight to the answers for today’s NYT Connections puzzle, I’ve got you covered:

  • Yellow – CHARM, CURSE, HEX, SPELL
  • Green – PEEL, SHELL, SHUCK, SKIN
  • Blue – BUFF, HEAD, HOUND, RAT
  • Purple – FINGERS, FLY, NUT, SCOTCH

When Does NYT Connections Reset?

That’s today’s puzzle, but if you want the next one, the game resets daily at midnight local time (that’s your local time). You’ll have 24 hours to complete the puzzle when midnight ticks over in your timezone.

How did you do? Did you get a perfect run? Let me know what your streak looks like on the Insider Gaming Discord server

Written by
Grant Taylor-Hill
Senior Editor and Esports Lead

Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.

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