Today's puzzle is about shifting shapes and gym equipment for sale.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for July 27 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,142. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,141, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What 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
- Cart
- Horse
- Carrot
- Stick
- Knitting needle
- Magnifying glass
- Beam
- Graveyard
- Bell
- Icicle
- Rings
- Heart
- Paradigm
- Stalactite
- Doppler
- Vault
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Stick it
- 🟩 Green: A specific shape
- 🟦 Blue: A shift in perspective
- 🟪 Purple: Amazon
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: Gymnastics apparatus
- 🟩 Green: Long tapered things
- 🟦 Blue: Kinds of shifts
- 🟪 Purple: Icons on a shopping site
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 July 27 for puzzle #1,142 are a lot harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.6 out of 5.
- 🟨 Gymnastics apparatus: Beam, horse, rings, vault
- 🟩 Long tapered things: Carrot, icicle, knitting needle, stalactite
- 🟦 Kinds of shifts: Doppler, graveyard, paradigm, stick
- 🟪 Icons on a shopping site: Bell, cart, heart, magnifying glass
Today's puzzle definitely felt more difficult than yesterday's. I started off with clues that hand the same shape for green: carrot, icicle, knitting needle, and stalactite.
After that I thought rings and heart might have to do with video game health bars, but then I realized it was more literal than that when I spotted some gym equipment that could all fit together for yellow: beam, horse, and vault.
Then came blue with a clever bit of word play with doppler, graveyard, paradigm, and stick.
That left purple as today's rote fill with bell, cart, heart, and magnifying glass.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Baby milestones: Crawling, first words, rolling over, solid, food
- 🟩 Outmoded consumer tech: Blackberry, discman, dvd player, plasma TV
- 🟦 Expressions for rain: April showers, liquid sunshine, scotch mist, wet weather
- 🟪 What 'shell' might refer to: Carapace, gas station, pastry crust, rowing boat
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,141, which had a difficulty rating of 1out of 5.
Solid food only brings one thing to mind, and once I saw crawling and first words, I knew I was on the right track. I threw in rolling over to finish out yellow.
I wasn't sure what scotch mist was, but it sounded rainy enough to chance lumping it in with liquid sunshine, wet weather, and april showers to solve blue.
After that came a bunch of tech that I still remember fondly: discman, dvd player, and plasma TV. I was searching for the fourth for a bit before I realized blackberry belonged with the bunch.
That left purple as today's rote fill with carapace, gas station, pastry crust, and rowing boat.
