Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 7 for puzzle #757 are much easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
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.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #756, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #757. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, 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.
Today's Connections words are: Dog, Dribble, Secret, Footprint, Rat, Shoot, Leak, Splash, Banana, Source, Canary, Block, Mark, Pass, Hat and Impact
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Informant
- 🟩 Green: Big impression
- 🟦 Blue: Basketball Moves
- 🟪 Purple: Top ___
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.
Here's a larger hint: Make it big shooting hoops to be #1, but remember snitches get stitches.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #757?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Informant: Canary, Leak, Rat, Source
- 🟩 Big Impression: Footprint, Impact, Mark, Splash
- 🟦 Basketball moves: Block, Dribble, Pass, Shoot
- 🟪 Top ___: Banana, Dog, Hat, Secret
The blue category was so easy today, I could have sworn it was yellow. Either way, it was a slam dunk with Block, Dribble, Pass, and Shoot on the first go.
With only three animal-related clues on the board, I figured I'd have to get a more creative with my thinking. With Leak and Source also on the board, the meaning behind Rat and Canary couldn't be clearer.
That left only Dog, and after I started brainstorming common uses, then Banana, Hat, and Secret popped out for the purple category.
That left green as today's rote fill with Footprint, Impact, Mark, and Splash, but it was easy enough to guess the connection between them.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Fired objects: Ceramics, China, Pottery, Ware
- 🟩 Particle: Crumb, Grain, Morsel, Shred
- 🟦 Drs: Dre, Evil, Pepper, Seuss
- 🟪 Ending with homophones of parts of the legs: Crypto, Decaf, Disney, Prussian
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #756, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
When I saw Dre, I figured what else could it be except the master of mixology himself. That sent me hunting for other names preceded by Dr., and I picked up Evil and Seuss easily enough. Pepper took me an embarrassingly long time to spot. It wasn't until I looked over at the soda I was drinking that it finally clicked.
After that came green with a bunch of synonyms for the ittiest bittiest bits of the world around us: Crumb, Grain, Morsel, and Shred.
I thought Ware was another word for stock of any variety, not just fired products, so I got lucky with solving yellow today. Ware was the only remaining clue that seemed to make even a lick of sense alongside China, Pottery, and Ceramics.
That made the purple category today's rote fill, and for how easy today's puzzle was, it sure was a toughie. All that time spent trying to figure out what Disney, Prussian, Crypto, and Decaf had to do with each other just to realize it's a wordplay category. Joke's on me.
Connections tips — how to win at Connections
There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.
For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.
For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.
If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.
Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.
The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).
One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.
Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.
If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.
