NYT Connections today hints and answers for Monday, February 23 #988

NYTimes Connections — (Image credit: Future)

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Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 23 for puzzle #988 are a lot easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.5 out of 5.

Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.

Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it

The New York Times Connections puzzle on February 23, 2026 — (Image credit: The New York Times)

Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.

Today's Connections words are: New year's even, volcano, masquerade, party hat, christmas tree, mistletoe, gorge, bluff, posture, cone, wedding, bolt, scarf, blarney stone, inhale, front

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

🟨 Yellow: Eat voraciously
🟩 Green: Conical things
🟦 Blue: Pose
🟪 Purple: Settings for a kiss

These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.

Here's a larger hint: Pucker up for a big dinner where Madonna vogues.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #988?

Drumroll, please...

🟨 Eat voraciously: Bolt, gorge, inhale, scarf
🟩 Conical things: Christmas tree, cone, party hat, volcano
🟦 Pose: Bluff, front, masquerade, posture
🟪 Settings for a kiss: Blarney stone, mistletoe, new year's eve, wedding

I forgot to eat breakfast this morning, so when I saw gorge and scarf it had my mind drifting to the leftovers in the fridge I've been procrastinating heating up for hours. Inhale seemed like a good synonym to throw in with them, and bolt was a tougher sell to get my head around but I got there eventually.

Mistletoe and new year's eve got me thinking about lip-locked traditions, and I picked up wedding and blarney stone to solve the rest of purple.

It seemed too obvious for the connection to be cone-shaped things when one of the clues is literally cone, but I stand corrected. Christmas tree, party hat, and volcano round out the rest of green.

That left a bunch of posers for blue with bluff, front, masquerade, and posture.

Yesterday's Connections answers

🟨 One who doesn't fit in: Black sheep, misfit, outcast, reject
🟩 Descriptors for graying hair: Distinguished, flecked, salt-and-pepper, silver
🟦 Classic comic strips: Blondie, bloom county, peanuts, the far side
🟪 Associated with Theodore Roosevelt: Big stick, bull moose, rough riders, teddy bear

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #986, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.

I must remember more of high school history class than I realized, because the purple category jumped out at me immediately with big stick, bull moose, rough riders, and teddy bear.

I recognized a few classic comic strips in Peanuts and The Far Side. I haven't heard of bloom county though, so before it clicked, I first struck out trying to tie blondie with the other hair-color clues.

I spotted a quartet of synonyms for yellow in black sheep, misfit, outcast, and reject.

That left green as today's rote fill with distinguished, flecked, salt-and-pepper, and silver.

Connections tips — how to win at Connections

There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.

For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.

For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.

If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.

Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.

The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).

One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.

Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.

If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.

Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him. He also handles all the Connections coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game since it released.

With contributions from

Alyse StanleyNews Editor