IT General

Connections is a game from the New York Times that challenges you to find the association between words. It sounds easy, but it isn't—Connections categories can be almost anything, and they're usually quite specific. If you need a hand getting the answers, we've got you covered.

Connections is the one of the most popular New York Times word games that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for January 27 Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Getting food

• Green: Isolate from one another

• Blue: 16-wheeler

• Purple: Reads like a dance show

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Ways to Get Food

• Green: Keep Apart

• Blue: Parts of a Big Rig

• Purple: Dance Events Plus A Letter

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections #595 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Ways to Get Food: FARM, FISH, GATHER, HUNT

• Keep Apart: CLOISTER, SECLUDE, SEPARATE, SILO

• Parts of a Big Rig: AXLES, HITCH, TRACTOR, TRAILER

• Dance Events Plus A Letter: BALLY, DISCOG, PROMO, RAVEN

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for January 27

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to the latest Connections.

Connections: Sports Edition is a new version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.

Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable What is Connections Sports Edition?

The NYT's latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication's sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

Tweet may have been deleted

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

Tweet may have been deleted

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here's a hint for today's Connections Sports Edition categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Negative pattern

• Green: Terms in a water sport

• Blue: Colleges near the Big Apple

• Purple: Sounds like they play basketball

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections Sports Edition categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Downturn

• Green: Surfing terms

• Blue: New York colleges

• Purple: Homophones of NBA player names

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections Sports Edition #125 is...

What is the answer to Connections Sports Edition today

• Downturn - DECLINE, PLUNGE, SKID, SLUMP

• Surfing terms - BARREL, CREST, SWELL, WAVE

• New York colleges - COLGATE, COLUMBIA, ST. JOHN'S, SYRACUSE

• Homophones of NBA player names - BARNS, CONNECT, HEART, HERO

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to the latest Connections.

Oh hey there! If you're here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we're serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today's answer.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable SEE ALSO: NYT Connections today: Hints and answers for January 27 Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

SEE ALSO: NYT's The Mini crossword answers for January 27, 2025 Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

Bright and cheerful.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

The letter N appears twice.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter S.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

SUNNY.

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for January 27

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to the latest Wordle.

If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game.

Strands requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable

By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.

If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for January 26 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for January 26 NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Ore so they say

These words are on the periodic table of elements.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

Words are ores of metal.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is vertical.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is PureMetal.

Featured Video For You Strands 101: How to win NYT’s latest word game NYT Strands word list for January 26

• Aluminum

• Nickel

• Cobalt

• Iron

• Titanium

• Cadmium

• PureMetal

Looking for other daily online games? Mashable's Games page has more hints, and if you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now!

Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to the latest Strands.

Many of us neglect our eye health, often spending long hours in front of a Windows PC that isn’t set up for comfortable viewing. Consider adjusting some settings to make Windows more accomodating to your eyes.

If you have a confidential PDF you want to password protect, you have a few ways to do that on your Windows 11 PC. You can use a desktop app or a web-based tool to encrypt your PDF files.

With a first look at the Switch 2, Nintendo practically confirmed a longstanding rumor: the Switch 2 would have mouse functionality in its Joy-Con. So what could such a feature be used for? We have some ideas.

Do you have a beautiful photo that you want to upload to social media, but there's an unwanted element in the background ruining it? You can use the Microsoft Paint Generative Erase feature to remove that element and upload the photo online.

Inheritance filmmaker Neil Burger reveals all the ways filming with an iPhone gave them access to locations and shots they otherwise would not have been able to achieve.

Inheritance is now in theaters.

You just installed Ubuntu—awesome! But wait, before you start using it, here are some free apps that I think you need to add right now. These tools will enhance your overall Ubuntu experience, boost performance, and make your desktop way more fun. Let's dive in!

Samsung includes Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top of Galaxy S25's gorgeous AMOLED display to protect it from scratches. However, it isn't infallible. So, if you want peace of mind, invest in a high-quality screen protector.

Social platform X is "barely breaking even," owner Elon Musk emailed employees, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even," Musk reportedly said. In a story about banks preparing to sell billions of dollars in debt borrowed by X, WSJ printed other parts of the email:

"Over the last few months, we've witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes...We are also seeing other platforms begin to adopt our commitment to free speech and unbiased truth."

SEE ALSO: DOGE officially announced. How the Elon Musk-led department will work

The latter sentence refers to Meta, which is removing fact-checks in favor of community notes, which X already has.

Elon Musk has denied writing this to staff, posting on X, "This report is false. I sent no such email. WSJ is lying."

Since his takeover of then-Twitter in 2022, Mashable has reported that X's user base has declined, fleeing for alternatives like Bluesky, especially after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Advertisers have been no different, with the trend of companies removing ads on X expected to continue this year.

The WSJ article stated that Morgan Stanley bankers have reached out to investors ahead of a $3 billion sale of debt it and other banks lent to X to complete Musk's buyout in 2022. Investors have allegedly expressed interest in buying the debt as they see X's financial position on an "upward trajectory," WSJ reported, likely because of Musk's alliance with President Trump.

Musk has been in the news this week for other reasons, including his attendance at Trump's inauguration on Monday and the "Roman salute" he gave during a speech.

If your photos contain sensitive information that you don’t want others to see, hide those parts using the tools at your disposal. You can use a built-in or a third-party app on your Windows 11 PC to do that.

Meta platforms Instagram and Facebook blocked and hid posts by abortion pill providers, the New York Times reported. The company confirmed to the Times that it blurred some posts and suspended some providers' accounts. The actions have reportedly ramped up this week following Trump's inauguration.

SEE ALSO: Report: Meta's fact checking program failed to spot most disinformation

This month, before the inauguration, Meta made several major changes to its platforms, including removing fact-checks and relaxing hate speech policies. A Meta spokesperson told the Times that the post-blocking and account suspensions aren't related to the moderation changes and attributed some of the incidents to the "overenforcement" of rules prohibiting pharmaceutical drug sales without proper certification.

Aid Access, Women Help Women, Just the Pill, and Hey Jane are abortion pill providers impacted by these actions, the Times reported.

In recent weeks, Instagram came under fire for blocking LGBTQ content (Meta claimed it was an "accident") and the #democrat hashtag.

For years, Meta platforms, particularly Instagram, have been accused of blocking and removing posts and accounts sharing sex-educational and LGBTQ content. In 2022, Instagram blocked posts that mentioned abortion following the overturning of Roe v. Wade (apparently due to a "technical glitch"). Mashable has also previously reported that Meta rejected period care ads for being political or adult content.

This week, The Trump administration shut down reproductiverights.gov, a site set up after Roe was overturned. The government site provided information on birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion pills.

I've owned most Nintendo's consoles, but the last one I purchased was a Wii U. Yeah, I skipped a pretty big one, but you can bet I'm getting a Switch 2.

Sometimes, the easiest solution can be the best one, and for PCs, that's just giving it a reset.

Want to use both Windows and Linux but want to keep all your files in sync? Whether you prefer automatic background syncing or manual control, these cross-platform tools offer secure, efficient solutions for keeping your data synchronized across operating systems.

On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg announced a $60-65 billion investment into Meta AI.

"This will be a defining year for AI," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post detailing the investment. "In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model, and we'll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D [research and development] efforts."

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg wants more 'masculine energy' in corporate America

Llama is the open-sourced Large Language Model (LLM) powering Meta's AI on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The current version is Llama 3, but Meta announced back in December that Llama 4 is coming in 2025.

Zuckerberg went on to say that Meta is building a data center of over two GW (gigawatts, a big amount of energy) "that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan." Meta expects to bring around one GW of computing this year and will end the year with more than 1.3 million GPUs. Basically, the data center will have a ton of processing power.

"We're planning to invest $60-65B in capex [capital expenditures] this year while also growing our AI teams significantly, and we have the capital to continue investing in the years ahead," Zuckerberg said.

This announcement coincides with Zuckerberg being named in a lawsuit claiming that Llama was trained using pirated materials. Additionally, it follows the unveiling of The Stargate Project, a $500 billion AI infrastructure investment announced by President Trump and OpenAI. Stargate will also facilitate the construction of AI data centers. 

"This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership," Zuckerberg concluded his post. "Let's go build!"

The day after Inauguration Day, Oklahoma Senator Dusty Deevers introduced a slate of legislation to "restore moral sanity" to the state, including criminalizing pornography.

The bill, SB593, would prohibit pornography, and those who produce, distribute, or possess porn in the state would face up to 10 years in prison. Project 2025 (the conservative policy wishlist for Trump's second term) calls for exactly this: a ban on pornography and the imprisonment of its creators.

Oklahoma already has an age-verification law in place, meaning that those who want to view a website with a "substantial portion" (over a third) of explicit content must verify their age with personal information like a digital ID. As a result, Pornhub is no longer available in the state. (The Supreme Court recently had a hearing about age verification, but the result is still pending.)

SEE ALSO: Did Trump's executive order just make everyone in the U.S. female?

The bill also heightens 10-to-30-year penalties for "organized pornography trafficking," though it's not immediately clear if this is referring to sex trafficking.

"Pornography is both degenerate material and a highly addictive drug," Deevers said in the announcement of the bills. "It ruins marriages, ruins lives, destroys innocence, warps young people's perception of the opposite sex, turns women into objects, turns men into objects, degrades human dignity, and corrodes the moral fabric of society. Any decent society will stand against this plague with the full weight of the law."

"Porn addiction" isn't recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a mental disorder due to lack of evidence, and the American Psychological Association (APA) points to a study that suggests porn can be used compulsively rather than an addiction. But many activities can be done compulsively, like eating or shopping. Another study suggested that one's perceived addiction to porn leads to more psychological stress over time.

As for how porn impacts perceptions, this seems like a great argument for comprehensive sex education. Among other things, sex ed teaches students media literacy — that porn is fantasy and not what sex is like — and teaches anatomy, so students can know their own bodies. But the first Trump administration sabotaged sex education in the country, and the pandemic disrupted it, too.

Only 36 states and DC require either sex education and/or HIV education at the time of publication. Oklahoma falls into the latter (mandating HIV education), and it stresses abstinence. It also isn't required to cover healthy relationships, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization for advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Additionally, the bill calls for heightening the penalties for possession of child sex abuse material (CSAM) from up to 20 years in prison to 10-to-30 years.

Deevers introduced several other bills as well, calling for measures such as abolishing abortion, ending no-fault divorce, and prohibiting Drag Queen Story Hour.