Today's NYT Connections: Hints To Help Solve Today's Game, May 31, 2024

The New York Times is well-known for its puzzle games — Wordle boxes continue to color our social media feeds (and we have the best Wordle starter words if you're still playing), and now there's a newer brainteaser on the block. It's called Connections, and it's a daily game with varying levels of difficulty, rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the hardest. As the name implies, the game is all about figuring out and grouping words that share something in common. Sometimes these links are obvious and easy, but they're tricky most of the time, so we get it if you need help spotting them. 

You also get a limited number of attempts because hey, what's a good game without the threat of failure? To make solving easier and keep the game fun, here's a guide to today's Connections game (May 31, 2024), which has a difficulty of 3.5 (yikes). Scroll down slowly to see hints that'll help you arrive at the answers yourself, or if you're at breaking point, jump to the end to see the solutions. We won't judge.

Each Connections puzzle features a 16-word grid from which you're supposed to make four groups of words that share something in common. These categories are as random as they come, and could be anything from a synonym or music genre to "a word that sounds like it hurts." New York Times insiders explain, "Typically, categories involve trivia or the meaning or structure of words." They also often add "red herrings" — words that seem like they could be in more than one category, so that makes it trickier (and more fun, depending on who you ask). Yet each puzzle has only one solution.

Each group is color-coded according to its difficulty level. The yellow group is the easiest and most obvious connection, green and blue are medium, and purple is the trickiest of the bunch. Technically, you only need to figure out three groups — the fourth will naturally be left over after 12 words are eliminated. If you're finding it difficult to make a connection, you can shuffle the board to make it easier to spot one.  

Click on four words and hit Submit to see if you've guessed a group correctly. If you're right, those words will be removed from the board and displayed in a color-coded bar above, along with the key to the category. You might get a message telling you that you're one word away from a connection if you've selected three correct words, but it's up to you to figure out which one to swap. If you're wrong, that counts as a mistake, and players lose the game if they make four of those. The hints below might help you prevent that from happening.

Here are the 16 words on the grid for today's Connections #355:

• FUJI

• MARACA

• OEUVRE

• BODY

• SLEEVE

• JACKET

• HANDS

• POLAROID

• OLYMPUS

• RECORD

• CANON

• SNOWGLOBE

• WORKS

• INSERT

• HOOD

• WHITNEY

These hints might help you sort them correctly:

1. Yellow group: compilation

2. Green group: elevated landform

3. Blue group: an art form overshadowed by digital streaming

4. Purple group: needs some movement

Still feeling stuck? Here's some extra help. Keep in mind, if you keep scrolling, you're definitely going to see the spoilers for all four categories for today's Connections puzzle. If you prefer to keep trying to crack the case solo, pause here until you do so. Here are the categories:

1. Yellow group: Corpus

2. Green group: Mount __

3. Blue group: Components of an LP

4. Purple group: Things people shake

If you're out of guesses, don't worry — you're not out of luck. See the section below for the answer reveal.

Final obligatory spoiler warning: this section directly reveals the solutions to Connections #355. Here are the words in each group:

1. Yellow group: Corpus (OEUVRE, CANON, BODY, WORKS)

2. Green group: Mount __ (OLYMPUS, FUJI, WHITNEY, HOOD)

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3. Blue group: Components of an LP (INSERT, JACKET, RECORD, SLEEVE)

4. Purple group: Things people shake (HANDS, MARACA, POLAROID, SNOWGLOBE)

There you have it! It cost one mistake to realize that hood and jacket were not the pairing we thought it was. Also, since everyone uses "album" to refer to an LP these days (unless you collect vinyl records), the related connections might not become quickly apparent. Hopefully you made it to the finish line without too many mistakes.

We put these guides up every day, so you can check back in whenever you're in a bind, fix, rut, or jam. See, that's one connection that isn't difficult to make. We also have some help for you if you're struggling to make connections in real life.