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Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on March 10 for puzzle #1,003 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 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.
Article continues belowToday'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: Mass, Gram, Duke, Toast, Brown, UNC, Wash, Sock, Penn, Roast, Pop, Box, Slug, Sear, Miss, and Cuz.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Cook with dry heat
- 🟩 Green: Familial nicknames
- 🟦 Blue: U.S. state abbreviations
- 🟪 Purple: Punch
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: Heat state punches, cuz.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #1,003?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Cook with dry heat: Brown, roast, sear, toast
- 🟩 Familial nicknames: Cuz, gram, pop, unc
- 🟦 U.S. state abbreviations: Mass, miss, penn, wash
- 🟪 Punch: Box, duke, slug, sock
I took an early strike when I had box, slug, sock and pop. Though I was told I was one away. I was 98% sure on box, slug and sock but it took awhile for me to swap in duke. I was looking for a colleges set but it didn't quite work, hence why I went duke.
I was quite surprised this was the purple set, but taking strikes perhaps proved why.
For the next set, I stuck with pop where I found family members in cuz, gram and unc.
I next nabbed the states with mass., miss., penn., and wash.
Which left brown, roast, sear, and toast as my final yellow set.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Starting with the same sound, spelled differently: Warehouse, wearable, werewolf, wherefore
- 🟩 Metaphors for public scrutiny: Fishbowl, hot seat, microscope, spotlight
- 🟦 Muppets: Animal, beaker, fozzie, gonzo
- 🟪 They feature a boss: Company, e street band, mafia, video game
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1002, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I am, above all else, an outspoken fan of "The Muppets," so once I spotted Gonzo (my favorite) I was locked in with Fozzie, Beaker, and Animal like that for blue.
I'm a sucker for a homonym, so next up to bat was warehouse, wearable, werewolf, and wherefore for yellow.
Still on "finally getting to use my English degree" train, I went fishing for some double entendres and reeled in fishbowl, hot seat, microscope, and spotlight.
That left purple as today's rote fill with company, e street band, mafia, and video game.
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.
