NYT Connections today hints and answers — Sunday, January 19 (#588)

Looking for clues for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 19 for puzzle #588 retain the same difficulty as yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 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, #587, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #588. 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: Sun, Pool, Action, Aquarium, Claim, Geometry, Bluff, Suit, Cape, Purse, Tampa Bay, Kitty, Plain, Case, Pot, Basin

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

• 🟨 Yellow: Fund
• 🟩 Green: Court Filing
• 🟦 Blue: Landforms
• 🟪 Purple: They have rays

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: Dealer’s choice and order in the court while you tap into what you remember from geography class.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #588?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Fund: Kitty, Pool, Pot, Purse
• 🟩 Court Filing: Action, Case, Claim, Suit
• 🟦 Landforms: Basin, Bluff, Cape, Plain
• 🟪 They Have Rays: Aquarium, Geometry, Sun, Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay was the clear outlier in today’s puzzle, and after chewing over it for a bit I realized the pun the Connections Crew was aiming for with the purple category, which was rounded out with Aquarium, Geometry, and Sun.

I had Law & Order on the TV for background noise, so it’s little wonder that the green category came next with Action, Case, Claim, and Suit.

After that I dug into what I remembered of high school geography to dig out Basin, Bluff, Cape, and Plain for the blue category.

That only left today’s easiest category with Kitty, Pool, Pot, and Purse. I tried linking up the last three at one point but gave up when I couldn’t find a fourth. You can tell I’m not a poker player because I’ve never heard Kitty used in that context; I thought we were talking about baby cats.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

• 🟨 Desire: Drive, impulse, itch, urge
• 🟩 Barb: Spine, spur, sticker, thorn
• 🟦 Info on a record: Album, artist, label, track
• 🟪 Turn the ____: Corner, page, tables, tide

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #587, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Yesterday, I had some Connections blinders on. I saw Thorn, Spur and Tide and was immediately thinking sports team. I could not find that fourth team though but it stuck in my craw the whole way through.

Where I did start was with album, artist, label and track as things on a record. Even with the popularity of vinyl I can see why this was a blue category.

I knocked out the yellow category because it was there and I wanted to be able to see the final 8 easier. So, drive, impulse, itch and urge. I briefly considered spur but it wasn’t quite right. Drive isn’t either but it fits better.

I became stuck here scraping the walls of my brain for a fourth sports team that was never going to come.

What got me around it was putting corner, page and tables together because I was thinking books. I took a strike throwing spine in. The one away clue got me to finally wake up and look at the board.

Finally saw sticker, thorn and spur. I assumed the sticking words were supposed to be the easier of the two groupings. Knowing which was which I put in the purple quartet of turn the corner, turn the page, turn the tables and turn the tide.

Then we wrapped it up with barbs; spine, spur, sticker and thorn.