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Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is extremely difficult, in my opinion. The blue and purple categories are pretty bizarre, although they’re fun once you see the connections. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers. And at the very end of the story, I dissect the purple and blue categories and why they tripped up so many players today.
The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time
Hints for today’s Connections groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Certain invertebrates.
Green group hint: Forest inhabitants.
Blue group hint: Involves a letter of the alphabet.
Purple group hint: Words with a similar sound.
Answers for today’s Connections groups
Yellow group: Arthropods.
Green group: Trees.
Blue group: [Letter] (is) for ____.
Purple group: Words that sound like two letters.
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today’s Connections answers?
The completed NYT Connections puzzle for Aug. 4, 2025.
The yellow words in today’s Connections
The theme is arthropods. The four answers are aphid, beetle, mite and tick.
The green words in today’s Connections
The theme is trees. The four answers are beech, cedar, pine and yew.
The blue words in today’s Connections
The theme is [letter] (is) for ____. The four answers are apple, cookie, effort and vendetta.
The purple words in today’s Connections
The theme is words that sound like two letters. The four answers are decay, easy, geo and ziti.
Those bizarre blue and purple categories
Let’s look more closely at the blue and purple categories. Blue is perhaps the most oddly phrased category I’ve seen in Connections ever, and I think I know why.
Blue category: [Letter] (is) for ____
“A is for apple” is well-known to kids learning their ABCs, or to Gen Xers and others who remember that lyric from an Apple Jacks cereal commercial. (NYT editors, you missed an opportunity to include “J is for jacks.”)
“C is for cookie” is a Sesame Street song sung by (who else?) Cookie Monster.
“V for vendetta” can refer to the 2005 movie of the same name — and it’s probably why this category is phrased so awkwardly, because it’s not “V is for vendetta,” so the always-grammatically correct NYT editors put the word “is” in parentheses, since it’s not used here.
The final one is probably meant to refer to “A for effort,” an expression meaning you get good marks for trying, though some people online are saying it should be “E for effort,” which doesn’t make as much sense to me.
Purple category: Words that sound like two letters
The purple category might not be as tough for Americans as for people playing the game in other countries. The category is words that sound like two letters. “Decay” is D-K, “easy” is E-Z, “geo” is G-O and ziti is “Z-T.”
But of course many countries don’t say “zee” for Z, they say “zed,” so ziti could be confusing.
And some people pronounce decay more like “duh-kay,” so that might also be tricky.
Once again, the New York Times puzzle editors manage to keep Connections fresh and challenging, even if a few streaks broke along the way.
