Club Benefits
Today's puzzle will have you in knots during a competition.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for May 5 below.
Article continues belowWhat is Connections
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.
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
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Hint
- Hitch
- Pointer
- Hiccup
- Bend
- Setback
- Blink
- Suggestion
- Sneeze
- Whiff
- Shiver
- Flicker
- Gamelan
- Sheepshank
- Matchstick
- Bowline
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Glimmer
- 🟩 Green: Involuntary actions
- 🟦 Blue: Kinds of knots
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with units in competitions
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.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on May 5 for puzzle #1,059 are the same harder than as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 out of 5.
- 🟨 Glimmer: Flicker, hint, suggestion, whiff
- 🟩 Involuntary actions: Blink, hiccup, shiver, sneeze
- 🟦 Kinds of knots: Bend, bowline, hitch, sheepshank
- 🟪 Starting with units in competitions: Gamelan, matchstick, pointer, setback
I made a weird hard-easy sandwich today. I did Cub Scouts as a kid so the knots leapt out to me immediately with bowline, hitch, bend and sheepshank.
Then I snagged the yellow set with flicker, hint, suggestion and whiff next. I legitimately do not seem to be connecting which are yellow and which are green lately. I thought the whiffs were more green than yellow.
Anyway, I put the green set next with blink, hiccup, shiver, sneeze.
All of that mess left gamelan, matchstick, pointer and setback.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Tender-hearted person: Marshmallow, softie, sweetheart, teddy bear
- 🟩 Pellet-filled things: Beanie baby, desiccant packet, eye pillow, hacky sack
- 🟦 Things with knobs: Control panel, etch a sketch, radio, stove
- 🟪 Starting with familiar names for kinds of dogs: Chowder, doodlebug, labubu, pitter-patter
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,058, which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5.
Today's puzzle had so many toy names, I would have bet money on that being one of the categories. That turned out to be a red herring, though, as I quickly crossed off one (Teddy bear) alongside other sugary nicknames like marshmallow, softie, and sweetheart for yellow.
Beanie baby and hacky sack clearly went together, though it took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that desiccant packet and eye pillow filled in alongside them for green.
After that came blue with control panel, etch a sketch, radio, and stove.
That left purple as today's rote fill with chowder, doodlebug, labubu, and pitter-patter.
