Need a hint for today’s Connections on Wednesday, 16th July? Today’s Connections puzzle is a real brain-racker – so much that you may fear for your victory streak. If that’s indeed the case, let us help you maintain your Connections score with this handy guide.
This guide has outlined everything you must know about Connections puzzles, from general gameplay tips to theme-specific hints.
In this guide:
Here are the 16 Connections words for today:
Quad | Corner | Tree | Hammy |
Lamb | Library | Delt | Surround |
Overdone | Trap | The | Bet |
Camp | Dorm | Dramatic | Cafeteria |
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 Wednesday 16th July
Here are your Connections hints for today:
- Yellow: You’ll find a lot of students here.
- Green: Very theatrical.
- Blue: You’re in the middle of something – how would you describe this?
- Purple: It’s the start of something Greek.
- Extra hint 1: The purple theme only contains three- and four-letter words.
- Extra hint 2: ‘Camp’ and ‘dorm’ are in different groups.
If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:
- Yellow: Cafeteria
- Green: Hammy
- Blue: Tree
- Purple: Bet
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: Parts Of A College Campus
- Green: Exaggerated, As A Performance
- Blue: Close In On
- Purple: Starts Of Greek Letters
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 Wednesday, 16th July:
- Yellow: Parts Of A College Campus (Cafeteria, Dorm, Library, Quad)
- Green: Exaggerated, As A Performance (Camp, Dramatic, Hammy, Overdone)
- Blue: Close In On (Corner, Surround, Trap, Tree)
- Purple: Starts Of Greek Letters (Bet, Delt, Lamb, The)

I’ve never lived on a real college campus – my student housing complex didn’t have a quad or a cafeteria. Still, I suspected a connection between cafeteria and library as ‘public spaces’, and in the absence of similar words, started thinking of ‘dorm’ as a third group member. Something university-related certainly came to mind, but I couldn’t solve the yellow theme without understanding the meaning of ‘quad’.
I ran into similar issues with ‘hammy’, which made me think of hamsters and hammocks, but not a theatrical exaggeration. I’ve no idea if people truly refer to a hammock as their ‘hammy’ (probably not), but it made me consider a combo of ‘camp, tree, and hammy’.
Unfortunately, finding three correct words and getting stuck on the fourth one seems to be my curse today. With the blue theme, too, I got ‘trap, corner, and surround’, without adding ‘tree’. It’s as if this Connections puzzle is 75% easy, and 25% ridiculously hard. Well, you can’t solve them all!
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!