Need a hint for today’s Connections on Friday, 23rd May? Another day, another Connections puzzle to torment our brains. There are easier puzzles out there to be sure, but then again, staring at an impossible word soup looking for common themes is rather fun.
There are limits, of course, and if you’ve reached yours today, this guide will lead you to the Connections answers.
In this guide:
Here are the 16 Connections words for today:
| Stone | Fiber | Marble | Eyeliner |
| Blowout | Makeup | Pound | Bash |
| Nature | Glasses | Blast | Dram |
| Nebula | Ounce | Character | Rave |
How to play Connections
Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.
For instance, the words “Hook”, “Nana”, “Peter”, and “Wendy” are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, “Action”, “Ballpark”, “Go”, and “Stick” are all words which commonly come just before the word “Figure”.
Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together – but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.
Each of the four groups in each day’s Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).
Click here to play today’s Connections puzzle!
Connections hint for Friday 23rd May
Here are your Connections hints for today:
- Yellow: Descriptions of a rather wild night.
- Green: They’re similar to ‘personality’.
- Blue: This theme is imperial rather than metric.
- Purple: There’s something feline about this theme.
- Extra hint 1: ‘Eyeliner’ and ‘makeup’ belong to different groups.
- Extra hint 2: ‘Stone’ and ‘marble’ are in different groups as well.
If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:
- Yellow: Blast
- Green: Makeup
- Blue: Dram
- Purple: Marble
Spoiler warning! Today’s Connections groups are revealed just below!
What are today’s Connections groups?
If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today’s Connections puzzle, below we’ll reveal the four correct Connections groups – the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.
Here are the Connections groups for today:
- Yellow: Quite The Party
- Green: One’s Constitution
- Blue: British Imperial Units Of Weight
- Purple: What “Cat’s Eye” Can Be Used To Describe
Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today’s puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.
Spoiler warning! Today’s Connections answer lies ahead!
What is today’s Connections answer?
Here is the answer to today’s Connections puzzle on Friday, 23rd May:
- Yellow: Quite The Party (Bash, Blast, Blowout, Rave)
- Green: One’s Constitution (Character, Fiber, Makeup, Nature)
- Blue: British Imperial Units Of Weight (Dram, Ounce, Pound, Stone)
- Purple: What “Cat’s Eye” Can Be Used To Describe (Eyeliner, Glasses, Marble, Nebula)
I suspect the yellow and blue groups formed the easier half of the puzzle for the majority of Connections players this time. Even if you don’t use the imperial weight system, ‘stone’, ‘pound’, and especially ‘ounce’ (since it doesn’t have a well-known secondary meaning) are probably quite familiar words. That said, I did struggle with ‘dram’ – apparently it’s a sixteenth part of an ounce. I’ve never heard of that one before!
The green theme is one of those ‘obvious in hindsight’ riddles, but it took me a long time to arrive at ‘constitution’. I was looking for things found in nature, other words for makeup, and crafting resources before I finally tried to find characters, leading to a match between ‘character’ and ‘nature’, and ultimately the rest of the theme.
While the words ‘eyeliner’ and ‘glasses’ did point to something eye-related, the link with marble wasn’t at all obvious to me. I only now realise they probably meant kid’s marbles with those colourful cat-like lines inside – I was actually thinking of a marble eye to replace a real one. Oh well, it’s not that far off.
Congratulations if you got today’s Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn’t succeed today, don’t worry – a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!