Need a tip for today’s Connections on Thursday, January 16? Solving a confusing connection puzzle often requires a chosen series of clues. Whether it’s assigning words to each group by process of elimination or wrapping your head around some unknown tidbits, a good tip or three can really support a lot.
We’ve listed today’s Connections words below along with all the strategies we used in our puzzle-solving mission. We hope these tips get you on the right track to maintaining your perfect score!
In this guide:
Here are 16 connection words for today:
| Market | Switch | Bet | Shopping mall |
| Trade | Gym | Departure | Advantage |
| Rug | Business | Mole | Sconce |
| Package | Agent | Baseboard | Trade |
How to play Connections
Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owner of Wordle). The goal of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, with each group of four words having a common theme.
For example, the words “Hook”, “Nana”, “Peter”, and “Wendy” are all Peter Pan characters. Let’s take another example: “Action”, “Ballpark”, “Go” and “Stick” are words that usually appear right before the word “Figure”.
Your task is to guess what themes connect different words – but be careful, because in most cases there are misleading connections that are only intended to confuse you! To win the game you must find all four connections without making 4 mistakes. On the fourth mistake, the game ends and the answer is revealed automatically.
Each of the four groups in the daily Connection puzzle is also assigned a different color to represent how straightforward or hard it is to find the Connection. These colors are: yellow (easiest), green (straightforward), blue (medium), and purple (hardest).
Connection tip for Thursday, January 16
Here are today’s Connections tips:
- Yellow: Think about shops and stores.
- Green: Fixed to a flat surface.
- Blue: Other terms for a secret agent.
- Purple: All these words can be combined with the rodent’s name.
- Bonus tip 1: A mole does not refer to an animal.
- Bonus tip 2: Pack and Rug belong to the same group.
If you need additional support, click on the spoiler text below to view one word belonging to each group:
- Yellow: Trade
- Green: Horn
- Blue: Mole
- Purple: Rug
Spoiler alert! Today’s Connections groups are revealed just below!
What are today’s Connections groups like?
If you need even more guidance to solve today’s Connections puzzle, below we’ll reveal the four correct Connection groups – the themes that connect each set of four words in the Connections grid together.
Here are today’s Connections groups:
- Yellow: Buying and selling
- Green: Installed on the wall
- Blue: Spy
- Purple: ___ Rat
Now that you know the reasoning behind the different connections in today’s puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check out the full answer below.
Spoiler alert! The answer to today’s Connections offer is before us!
What’s today’s answer on Connections?
Here is the answer to today’s Connection puzzle, which will take place on Thursday, January 16:
- Yellow: Buying and selling (business, trade, market, trade)
- Green: Installed on the wall (skirting board, socket, wall lamp, switch)
- Blue: Spy (Agent, Resource, Mole, Plant)
- Purple: ___ Rat (gym, shopping mall, herd, rug)
Today’s Connections was easier for me, with fairly plain categories that weren’t too hard to distinguish. I guessed all the market-oriented words of the Yellow group quite quickly, and the Green group was also quite straightforward, since it’s not often that you see words like “Skirtboard” and “wall lamp” without thinking about lighting fixtures or at least flat surfaces, for which lighting fixtures are attached.
Blue’s “Mole” and “Plant” initially led me astray because my first instinct was to think of a low-sighted little mammal that burrows underground and the green things around my house that I always fail to water. But “The Agent” and “Asset” made me consider spies, and then I realized how often spy movies have a “mole” or “plant” in an organization.
Finally, Purple arrived surprisingly quickly today. As a child of the 90s, I remember what it was like to be a Mall Rat and watch Rugrats!
Congratulations if you answered today’s question correctly in the Connections app, with or without the support of our helpful tips above! And if you didn’t succeed today, don’t worry – a recent Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!
