NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, March 12 (#640)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on March 12 for puzzle #640 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 4 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, #639, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #640. 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: Orange, Ketchup, Elmo, Cotton, Sugar, Eye, Rose, Month, Eggs, Rock, Purple, Butter, Flour, Cardinal, John, and Silver.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Ingredients in a pound cake
• 🟩 Green: Things that are red
• 🟦 Blue: Words said to have no exact rhyme
• 🟪 Purple: ____ Candy

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 hints: Make a cake, get red, there are no rhymes and enjoy some candy.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #640?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Ingredients in a classic pound cake: Butter, eggs, flour, sugar
• 🟩 Things that are red: Cardinal, Elmo, ketchup, rose
• 🟦 Words said to have no exact rhymes: Month, orange, purple, silver
• 🟪 ____ Candy: Cotton, eye, John, rock

So, no one else saw the colors and immediately went to Legends of the Hidden Temple? Honestly, was a little sad that one didn't work out.

After that heartbreak, we went down the line starting with butter, eggs, flour and sugar.

I was trying to figure out Elmo specifically and the red things came fairly easily from there so we added cardinal, ketchup and rose after a brief dalliance of looking for wines with orange and rose.

I figured out purple before blue because John Candy clicked for me. So I saved Uncle Buck for last and selected blue first; month, orange, purple and silver which don't have rhymes.

Then we wrapped it all up with Cotton Candy, Eye Candy and Rock Candy.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Variation from the norm: Alternative, break, change, departure
• 🟩 Things that ring: Alarm, bell, intercom, phone
• 🟦 Things traditionally made of leather: Football, moccasins, saddle, wallet
• 🟪 Singer-songwriter pianists: Keys, King, Legend, Wonder

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #639, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I must have been hungry today because I saw wonder and immediately thought Wonder Bread. King turned into King's Hawaiian. I spent far more time than I care to admit looking for bread brands.

What I actually claimed first was the green category with alarm, bell, intercom and phone for things that ring.

I saw the yellow category and tried to save it but I was not clicking the blue or purple so I put in alternative, break, change and departure to help myself see the final eight.

That actually helped as the grid adjusted and I was able to see the leather connection of football, moccasins, saddle and wallet.

Which left us with singer songwriters of Alicia Keys, Carole King, John Legend, and Stevie Wonder. A pretty solid lineup.