NYT Connections today hints and answers for Tuesday, February 24 #989

NYTimes Connections — (Image credit: Future)

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Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on February 24 for puzzle #989 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 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 24, 2026 — (Image credit: 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: Coward, Laser, Scottie, Bones, Jim, Coral, Balance, Chekhov, Thistle, Shaw, Shells, Tractor, Tartan, Teeth, Miller, and Bagpipes.

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

🟨 Yellow: Calcium-based structures
🟩 Green: Symbols of Scotland
🟦 Blue: Famous playwrights
🟪 Purple: ____ Beam

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: Calcium Scots write plays about Beams.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #989?

Drumroll, please...

🟨 Calcium-based structures: Bones, coral, shells, teeth
🟩 Symbols of Scotland: Bagpipes, scottie, tartan, thistle
🟦 Famous playwrights: Chekhov, coward, miller, shaw
🟪 ____ Beam: Balance, jim, laser, tractor

I fell for the Star Trek of Jim, Bones, Chekhov, and Scottie. However, sticking with Trek, I found Beams. That got me to laser, tractor, Jim, and balance.

I took bones next with bones, coral, shells, and teeth.

With the final 8 I had Chekhov, Miller, and Shaw. I'd not heard of the playwright Coward, I assume Noel Coward, after some Googling.

I groked the Scotland symbols in bagpipes, Scottie, tartan, and thistle, which left coward leftover. So blue went in, and then green.

Yesterday's Connections answers

🟨 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

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #988, which had a difficulty rating of 1.5 out of 5.

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.

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