NYT Connections today hints and answers — Saturday, May 3 (#692)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on May 3 for puzzle #692 are slightly harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 4.3 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.

Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #691, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #692. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.

Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

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

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: Smoke, Shell, Fire, Milk, Cream, Comp, Hell, Lit, Sick, Lick, Paste, Neti, Orgo, Ill, Well, and Dope.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Awesome
• 🟩 Green: Defeat soundly
• 🟦 Blue: "Will" contractions without the apostrophe
• 🟪 Purple: URL endings plus a letter

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: This puzzle will awesomely defeat you with contractions online.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #692?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Awesome: Dope, fire, lit, sick
• 🟩 Defeat soundly: Cream, lick, paste, smoke
• 🟦 "Will contractions without the apostrophe: Hell, ill, shell, well
• 🟪 URL endings plus a letter: Comp, milk, neti, orgo

So, did I take three strikes on the yellow group? Yes. So, that's how my go at this puzzle started.

I had dope, sick, fire and ill pretty much immediately. Strike 1, but one away. So, I swapped out sick for lit. Strike 2, still one away. Dropped fire for sick. Strike 3, but one away. I don't know why I was so dogged on this group but I kept going and finally kicked out ill. And we got it with dope, fire, lit, and sick.

This did make me wary for the rest of the puzzle since I had no more errors to give.

Fortunately, the green group was easier when I saw smoke and thought, "You just got smoked by this puzzle." That clicked for me and getting paste, then lick and ending with cream wrapped up that set.

I lied a bit at top, my first pursuit was Neti pot, so I was looking for other pots but that fell apart fairly quickly beyond paste pot and cream pot.

Anyway, I took a stupid swing on the blue category when I literally thought, these four words; hell, shell, well and ill, all have double Ls. Which is probably more of a green or yellow level category not the blue, which was sort of proven right with the "will" contractions.

And we ended up with URL endings plus a letter: comp, milk, neti, and orgo.

Hopefully, Sunday is kinder to us or at least me.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Kinds of carvings: Bust, relief, statue, torso
• 🟩 Pillar: Brace, post, prop, support
• 🟦 BBQ offering: Dog, link, rib, wing
• 🟪 ____ Neck: Bottle, break, goose, turtle

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #691, which had a difficulty rating of 4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

The first word I saw today was brace. So, I was immediately looking for other supportive words which led to prop and support. I wasn't thinking pillars or columns so I didn't immediately grok post as a similar word, a theme in today's puzzle.

The blue quartet clicked next for me when I did a couple of shuffles that put rib and wing next to each other. I usually try not to shuffle but I was not seeing clues today. Those two hanging out got me thinking about grilling, which got me to see dog and link.

Early on I had seen bust, relief and statue but was not finding the fourth sculpture word.

So, here I put in bottle, break, goose and turtle because bottle neck came to mind and opened up the other words for me.

And we ended on yellow's bust, relief, statue and torso. Torso made me irrationally upset as something that I didn't immediately think fit with the other three words despite it fitting the category title. I think torso was chosen as a trap word to go with rib and wing over other sculptural words, but I can't prove that.