NYT Connections hint and answers for Thursday, 9th Jan

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Wednesday 22nd January!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Thursday, 9th January? As sure as the sunrise, a new day means a new Connections puzzle from the New York Times. And this time you might find it particularly tricky, depending on where in the world you live. I hate to say it, but there's some pretty specific knowledge required here.

To help keep your win streak going a little longer, we've compiled our daily guide of Connections hints for today, including not only a cryptic clue for each group, but also the option to reveal the four groups tying together all 16 words. And if you run out of ideas, you can scroll to the bottom of this page for today's Connections answers!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Thursday 9th January
• What are today's Connections words?
• What are today's Connections groups?
• What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Shining	Finance	Table	Sit
Stand	Stay	To	IT
Sea	Stall	Come	From
Legal	Heel	Booth	Sales

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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).

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Connections hint for Thursday 9th January

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: You might purchase something here
• Green: Things you might say to a particular household member
• Blue: Where you might work
• Purple: Words of a famous song
• Extra hint 1: One of these groups is very decidedly American
• Extra hint 2: Stand and Sit belong to different groups

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

• Yellow: Stand
• Green: Sit
• Blue: Legal
• Purple: Shining

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Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

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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: Vendor's Spot At A Market
• Green: Dog Commands
• Blue: Corporate Departments
• Purple: Last Words In "America The Beautiful"

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.

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Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

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What is today's Connections answer?

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Thursday, 9th January:

• Yellow: Vendor's Spot At A Market (Booth, Stall, Stand, Table)
• Green: Dog Commands (Come, Heel, Sit, Stay)
• Blue: Corporate Departments (Finance, IT, Legal, Sales)
• Purple: Last Words In "America The Beautiful" (From, Sea, Shining, To)

Jeez, that purple group is not at all friendly to those outside the US. I hadn't the faintest clue about that group, and was only able to solve the puzzle by leaving them til last.

The other big curveball today was that "Sit" and "Stand" at first appear to go together, but end up in different groups. It took me a bit of thinking around that to figure out what was going on.

My first successful group was actually the blue group of department names, although I was momentarily halted wondering if there was some sort of connection between "Finance" and "Booth" or "Table". After that, I realised I was looking at dog commands and stall synonyms, so I was able to evade the "Sit"/"Stand" pitfall there.

And then it was just the "America The Beautiful" group left. While it's evidently very specific knowledge (for certain parts of the world, anyway), it isn't quite as nasty a puzzle as you sometimes get in Connections, because at least there were no red herrings in that group. I couldn't find a way to make those four words make sense together, but equally none of them belonged in any of the other groups, so it was quite easy to sort everything else out and then reveal the purple group last.

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!