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Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Friday, January 26, #229

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Need help with Connections #229? Here are some hints and the answers

NYT Connections
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Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 26 for puzzle #229 are trickier than yesterday, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.6 out of 5.

Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. And if the hints aren't enough, you'll find all 4 answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words. Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #228, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #229. 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.

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

  • 🟨 Yellow: Home run
  • 🟩 Green: A thumping
  • 🟦 Blue: Collect $200 when passing Go
  • 🟪 Purple: Hop to it

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.

Alright then, here's a larger hint: Today you'll be presented with what appears to be the contents of a wardrobe, but be wary of putting them all together. Instead, consider which items may be used in a sporting context, and why this Top Hat is way too small to fit on your head...

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #229?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Baseball equipment: Ball, base, bat, glove
  • 🟩 Hard hit: Blow, lick, sock, strike
  • 🟦 Original Monopoly tokens: Boot, iron, thimble, top hat
  • 🟪 ______ bunny: Bad, bugs, dust, honey

I enjoyed the rare privilege of resolving the trickier purple category first today, grateful to a childhood watching hours of Looney Tunes re-runs. For me, the word Bugs could only ever be followed by 'bunny', and so I could have been nonchalantly chomping on a carrot as I hopped to complete the category with Bad, Dust, and Honey.

Glove, Sock, Top Hat, and Boot forced me to consider a sartorial connection here, but, thankfully, I took a beat before submitting this foursome as an answer. That's because I also spotted the words Strike and Bat, leading me towards a baseball theme that could also therefore include Glove. 

Despite my informed reticence, I still managed to lose my first life, entering Bat, Base, Glove, and Strike to find that I was only one away. Thankfully, like baseball, Connections offers several chances before a strikeout, and so I honed in specifically on equipment, adding Ball in place of Strike to complete the yellow category. 

I then went from one famous American pastime to another, as the seemingly random items of Iron and Thimble made a lot more sense when combined with the aforementioned Boot and Top Hat. They are, of course, original Monopoly tokens.

That left Blow, Lick, Sock, and Strike, which sound like terms straight from Norman Mailer's The Fight, as synonyms for a hard hit. With today's Connections complete, I'm pleased to report that there was no strikeout, or indeed knockout, for me today!

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #228, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

In today's Connections puzzle, words like Handsome, Legend, Popular, and Icon glittered before me like stars on a red carpet, each vying for the spotlight of relevancy. I felt like a talent scout carefully picking out the words that'd play lead in my next movie.

Amidst the flashbulbs and chatter, the solitary Hippo certainly caught my eye—a creature very much out of water here, I thought. What could it possibly pair with?

But first, I turned my attention to ancient scripts and digital avatars. Glyph matched with Symbol, then Icon, and finally, Character nestled in, crafting the green category of pictographs on the wall with the precision of a long-forgotten scribe.

  • 🟨 Of-the-moment: Big, hot, in, popular
  • 🟩 Pictograph: Character, glyph, icon, symbol
  • 🟦 Impose, as a penalty: Assess, charge, fine, levy
  • 🟪 Words beginning with body parts: Handsome, hippo, legend, lipid

Next came the stern umpires of the puzzle, Charge, Fine, Levy, and (in my opinion) their rather distant cousin, Assess. They demanded compensation, completing the blue category with an authoritative stamp of penalties.

Lastly, I circled back to that Hippo, which wallowed patiently beside Legend, Lipid, and Handsome. I admit it took a few minutes for the penny to drop as I saw past their disguises, revealing the anatomy hidden in their prefixes—Hand, Hip, Leg, and Lip. The purple category unearthed, a clever play on words that began with body parts.

With a final flourish, the red carpet was rolled up, and the puzzle stood complete. 

Alexis James
Alexis James

Alexis is a freelance writer and podcast producer with a Master's degree in Journalism. His love for creative technology stems from the day he was gifted his first ever digital voice recorder (a beloved Olympus WS 110), which brought with it the wonderful realisation that he'd never again have to rely on his iffy shorthand.  Alexis has over 16 years of experience crafting articles for industry-leading print and online technology publications, including Tom's Guide, Creative Bloq, and TechRadar. When he's not writing, Alexis combines his love for travel and sports, interviewing adventurers and athletes all over the world.

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