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NYT Connections hint today and answers for Saturday, 18th Jan

Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #586.

An abstract image with an altered Connections logo in the centre, surrounded by circles connected by webbed lines.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT
Jeremy Blum avatar
Guide by Jeremy Blum Guides Writer
Published on

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 Saturday, 18th January? There's nothing like sitting down with a good puzzle during the weekend and testing your word knowledge - until the puzzle turns out to be utterly confounding, that is! This basically describes my typical experience solving Connections for the process of writing these guides.

Luckily, gentle reader, you get to benefit from the mental gymnastics that I must endure! I've gone ahead and outlined the answer to today's puzzle in both succinct hint form and in greater detail for anyone out there who wants to know how my mind works when it comes to cracking the Connections code.

In this guide:

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Label Spine Page Tide
Urge Sticker Track Spur
Corner Artist Drive Tables
Itch Thorn Album Impulse

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).

Connections hint for Saturday 18th January

Here are your Connections hints for today:

  • Yellow: When you're feeling compelled to do something, use these words.
  • Green: Pointy things that might grab your clothes or stab you.
  • Blue: You'll find this on a CD case or vinyl sleeve.
  • Purple: All of these words are used in an expression that involves turning.
  • Extra hint 1: Sticker here doesn't refer to a sticky thing that you paste on something else.
  • Extra hint 2: Corner and Tide belong in the same group.

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

  • Yellow: Drive
  • Green: Spur
  • Blue: Artist
  • Purple: Page
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: Desire
  • Green: Barb
  • Blue: Info On A Record
  • Purple: Turn The ___

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 Saturday, 18th January:

  • Yellow: Desire (Drive, Impulse, Itch, Urge)
  • Green: Barb (Spine, Spur, Sticker, Thorn)
  • Blue: Info On A Record (Album, Artist, Label, Track)
  • Purple: Turn The ___ (Corner, Page, Tables, Tide)
A screenshot showing Connections answers for January 18, 2025.
Here are your Connections answers for January 18. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun, NYT

I started today's Connections feeling pretty confident, as "Drive," "Impulse," and all of the other Desire-associated words were quite simple to link together. Then I ran into trouble with the Green group, especially because "Spine" seemed to go alongside some of the other words here, like "Corner" and "Page." I felt certain that one of the word categories was related to books as a result.

Eventually, though, I used process of elimination to figure out the album-orientated Blue words before realising that "Spur" and "Thorn" probably went together. Then it was just a matter of determining the rest of the Green and Purple words. I fully admit that this process took forever, as I'm not someone who regularly says "Turn the tables" or "Turn the page" very often. (In fact, I'm far more likely to invert the phrase and say "the tables have turned" instead.)

I finally assembled the entirety of the Green group, however, when I recalled that "Spine" and "Sticker" can refer to the pointed branches on bushes and other garden fixtures. And so, all of the other words that I hadn't dealt with ended up in the Purple group by default. Whew, that was a tough one - so much for my earlier confidence.

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!

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