NYT Connections today hints and answers — Friday, July 18 (#768)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 18 for puzzle #768 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 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, #767, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #768. 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: See, Spot, Run, Catch, Cobra, Slide, Guitar, String, Blanket, Bridge, Eel, Cow, Streak, Note, Wheel, and Series.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Sequence
• 🟩 Green: Pick up on
• 🟦 Blue: Yoga backbends
• 🟪 Purple: Electric ____

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: Get electric in a string of yoga spots.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #768?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Sequence: Run, series, streak, string
• 🟩 Pick up on: Catch note, see, spot
• 🟦 Yoga backbends: Bridge, cobra, cow, wheel
• 🟪 Electric ____: Blanket, eel, guitar, slide

I was trying to go down the line today and totally biffed it. So how did we mess this up.

For starters, I had see, spot, note and catch, which I assumed was yellow. It feels yellow. Nope, that set was the green group.

Then I grabbed the actual quartet of run, series, streak and string.

It took a moment but I finally clicked electric eel, likely due to crosswordese. This opened up purple and let me get electric blanket, electric guitar and electric slide.

I went into the last four with no clue what brought them together. I would describe my yoga experience as...limited. I know a few poses but this was a set: bridge, cobra, cow and wheel, that i was never going to put together. Luckily for me, it was last.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Parts of a college campus: Cafeteria, dorm, library, quad
• 🟩 Exaggerated, as a performance
• 🟦 Close in on: Corner, surround, trap, tree
• 🟪 Starts of Greek letters: Bet, delt, lamb, the

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #767, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

There is an obvious rapper trap with Pac, Snoop, Biggie and Wu-Tang, which like yesterday is helpful because once you see it you know you can spread those words to other groups.

I wanted to figure out Mario World and saw that it was missing a "Super" which helped me see the other super words in power, pac, and glue.

I wasn't seeing the other two harder groups, but I did the meddlesome quartet of snoop, poke, pry, and nose around.

Perhaps I should have seen the fish of the purple set earlier since when I see "poke" my first thought is always poke bowl and not prodding.

Anyway, Cape Cod and Drum and Bass triggered the fish thoughts, which is how I got to Wu-Tang and then camisole.

I have no idea why I initially missed the green set of no biggie, no hard feelings, no sweat and no worries since three of those phrases are a part of my daily lexicon. So it goes with connections some days.

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.