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Today's puzzle is all about the starting line.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for June 12 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,097. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,096, 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
- School Days
- Bed Head
- Quote Unquote
- Curse Word
- Copy Editor
- Spell Checker
- Bank Teller
- Pack Rat
- Charm Bracelet
- Murder Mystery
- Mirror Selfie
- Mouth Guard
- Pride Rock
- Echo Park
- Delta Airlines
- Hex Key
We have the Connections categories below but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Witchy
- 🟩 Green: Kingdoms
- 🟦 Blue: Ape
- 🟪 Purple: Water is wet
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: Starting with incantations
- 🟩 Green: Starting with animal group names
- 🟦 Blue: Starting with synonyms for "repeat"
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with parts of a river
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 June 12 for puzzle #1,097 are the same difficulty as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Starting with incantations: Charm bracelet, curse word, hex key, spell checker
- 🟩 Starting with animal group names: Murder mystery, pack rat, pride rock, school days
- 🟦 Starting with synonyms for "repeat": Copy editor, echo park, mirror selfie, quote unquote
- 🟪 Starting with parts of a river: Bank teller, bed head, delta airlines, mouth guard
Today's puzzle, once you find the pattern, is surprisingly straightforward considering the rating. Honestly, any of the sets could be slotted in any color.
I started with the crossword-ese thought of aping when I saw mirror selfie, and copy editor. That got me to echo park. I knew I was on the right track, but it did take a second to click with quote unquote.
The spells got my eye next, which is why I pursued hex key, curse word and charm bracelet along with spell checker for the yellow set.
About here is when I saw the pattern and breezed through the next two sets.
In the last eight, I didn't click on the rivers, but I did with murder mystery and pack rat. That got me to pride rock and school days for names of animal groups.
Which left the river parts with bank teller, bed head, delta airlines, and mouth guard.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Technique: Fashion, manner, method, way
- 🟩 Gross things that form on wet surfaces: Crust, film, scum, skin
- 🟦 Parts of a theater: Catwalk, pit, stage, wings
- 🟪 Counted in document word counts: Character, line, page, word
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,096, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.
I took an embarrassing number of strikes trying to make a team logo set with rhino, viking helmet, and devil before I clicked on the horns idea, which got me to brass band.
Broncho is a word I looked at for my logos and combined with forerunner is how I found the SUVs. Took a moment to find trouper and UConn, but we got there.
The workout words were obvious so I started putting in the other four when the payment apps clicked with Venmo. The others being Zelle, Paypal, and Stripe.
And my final four were the yellow set of balance, cardio, stretching and weights.
Saved this one with one strike left because I got stubborn on logos. Ah well.
