Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on March 29 for puzzle #657 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.6 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, #656, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #657. 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: Silver, Bike, Boxer, Panama, Bermuda, Clue, Man, Commando, Crystal, Brazil, Witness, China, Plan, Cargo, Linen, and Canal.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Materials associated with fancy dining
- 🟩 Green: Kinds of shorts
- 🟦 Blue: Nouns in a famous palindrome
- 🟪 Purple: Movies from 1985
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:
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #657?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Materials associated with fancy dining: China, crystal, linen, silver
- 🟩 Kinds of shorts: Bermuda, bike, boxer, cargo
- 🟦 Nouns in a famous palindrome: Canal, man, panama, plan
- 🟪 Movies from 1985: Brazil, Clue, Commando, Witness
Well, I learned something today, so that's nice.
To kick things off though, I saw Bermuda and Panama and immediately added shorts and hat, respectively. Bike was near Bermuda so I started focusing on shorts. From there you get boxer shorts and cargo shorts.
I saw the yellow clues of china, crystal, linen and silver and wanted to save it but was not seeing the blue or purple groups, so I reluctantly entered the yellow in.
From here I got stuck because I realized that Brazil, Clue and Commando were 80s movies (could not have told you specifically 1985). However, I couldn't find the fourth movie. Eventually, I took a stab at Witness, a 1985 movie starring Harrison Ford as detective protecting an Amish woman and her son after they witness a murder. One to add to the watch list.
The blue category when I entered canal, man, panama, plan drew a blank stare from me. I had never heard this palindrome before or could not remember it if I did.
It turns out there's a Nova documentary from 1987 about the Panama canal with the title "A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama!" Here watch it:
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Hurl: Chuck, pelt, pitch, slang
- 🟩 Be on both sides of: Bookend, bracket, flank, surround
- 🟦 Parts of a classic girl scout uniform: Badge, beret, sash, skirt
- 🟪 ____ Hall: Bingo, city, Monty, study
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #656, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I got stuck with my start today as I spent too long trying to put together a steak group with chuck, skirt and flank. I could not find the fourth steak though and spent too long racking my brain for cuts of meat.
Eventually, I saved myself with chuck and pelt as throwing actions which led to pitch and sling.
From there I was looking at beret and was thinking French uniforms with a badge and sash. I was not connecting the girl scout idea though until I took a quick strike to check myself by throwing in bracket. it was then that skirt clicked in.
After that I saw the bookend group and picked up bracket, flank and surround.
I had spent a lot of time staring at Monty but couldn't get past "Fully Monty" totally forgetting about Monty Hall who was well before my time but is a common enough crossword-ese/puzzle name. Anyway, the purple group was Bingo hall, city hall, Monty Hall and study hall.
