NYT Connections today – my hints and answers for January 4 (#938)

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Saturday’s puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Saturday, January 3 (game #937).

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

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NYT Connections today (game #938) – the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today’s Connections, game #938, are…

YELLOW: PAPER PUBLICATION COPY, EDITION, ISSUE, PRINT
GREEN: SPOOL COIL, CRANK, REEL, WIND
BLUE: THINGS A DEFENSIVE FOOTBALL PLAYER DOES BLITZ, BLOCK, SACK, TACKLE
PURPLE: SYNONYMS FOR BUTT PLUS STARTING LETTER DREAR, ETAIL, GRUMP, SCAN

My rating: Hard
My score: 1 mistake

I missed out on today’s cheeky purple category as I was looking in the wrong places for added letters.

My mistake came when I connected GRUMP, DREAR, WIND and CRANK, thinking they’d all work with an added Y as perhaps “personality traits of miserable men” or something. That said, I managed to resist a second mistake by collecting the multi-printer functions – PRINT, COPY and SCAN. The lack of a fourth held me back.

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As someone who doesn’t follow the NFL, I was pleased to get THINGS A DEFENSIVE FOOTBALL PLAYER DOES, although I was tempted to put SCAN in here too. In soccer the ability to scan the pitch and know everyone’s positions is a highly regarded ability.

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don’t technically need to solve the final one, as you’ll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What’s more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It’s a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.