Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of another long week! It’s time to welcome the weekend, but before it gets here, you need to smash today’s NYT Connections puzzle. Fortunately, I’m here with the best NYT Connections hints and answers you’ll find anywhere online.
Simply scroll down, get the NYT Connections solutions you need today, and wrap up today’s challenge as quickly as possible!
How to Play NYT Connections
In June 2023, NYT Connections emerged as yet another game in the ever-growing lineup of the New York Times titles. 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 worldwide and can be played on desktop devices or in a mobile app.
But how do you play NYT Connections?

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 can have double meanings, 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.
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 (April 17)
Here are the words from today’s NYT Connections puzzle:
- DOMINANT
- KEY
- ROOT
- TAN
- TONIC
- STEM
- HAMMER
- GENERAL
- BULB
- SODA
- COMMON
- STRING
- STORMY
- LEAF
- PEDAL
- POPULAR
And here are the hints I can offer for today’s NYT Connections:
- Yellow – Words you’d associate with a plant
- Green – Words that are associated with something being ‘the most of’ something
- Blue – Words you’d associate with a piano
- Purple – Words that make up one half of popular drink names
Here’s the final warning before we get to the NYT Connections answers for today, April 17:
Are you sure you want to scroll further?
Very well!
NYT Connections Answers Explained for Today, April 17 (#1041)
If you want to jump straight to the answers for today’s NYT Connections puzzle, I’ve got you covered:
- Yellow – BULB, LEAF, ROOT, STEM
- Green – COMMON, DOMINANT, GENERAL, POPULAR
- Blue – HAMMER, KEY, PEDAL, STRING
- Purple – SODA, STORMY, TAN, TONIC
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.




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