Tip and answer from today's Connections on Friday March 15 for 278

It’s almost the weekend, the perfect time to relax by putting the kettle on and working on the Response from Connections for today March 15.

If you’ve never played it before, Connections challenges you to sort a group of 16 words into four groups where all the words are well… connected. This connection could come from the fact that they share a similar meaning, being part of a place name, objects found in a kitchen or anything else really!

Although it may seem easy, the connection groups each have a different difficulty level – yellow being the easiest and purple being the hardest. For this reason, working today’s login answer could be rather tricky. You may get one group right away, but another might be a mystery to you. Fortunately, we are here to help!

Originally developed during the New York Times games department’s annual game jam, the beta version of Connections was released in June 2023. Since then, it has become one of the most popular games the NYTimes has to offer, beaten only by Worlde. Although some connections have been made with the BBC’s Only Connect programme…

Tip for Today’s Connections Answer

Instead of jumping straight to the answer, let’s start with some clues for today’s Connections puzzle:

YELLOW – If someone says something critical about your work, they say one of these words.
Green – You might say one of these words after accidentally doing something wrong.
Blue – You’ll need one in court.
Purple – All words in this group start with “D”.
Pardon is not in the same group as Defense.

Remember: yellow is the easiest group to find, followed by green and blue, with purple being the hardest set of words to connect.

Connecting words for March 15

Here are the words included in today’s Connections puzzle – see if the clues above help you make a connection before checking out today’s answer:

Dirty	Sorry	Garbage can	Date
Struck	Out	Oops	Excuse
Doh	Blast	Apologies	Dead
Defense	Pardon	slam	Reason

Connections response of March 15, 2024

Without further ado, here is Connections’ answer for today:

Criticize – Explosion, Hit, Slam, Trash
‘My mistake!’ – Apologies, Oops, Sorry, Sorry
Alibi- Defense, Excuse, Out, Reason
Play ___ – Date, Dead, Dirty, Doh

Image credit: Eurogamer/The New York Times

What to play after Connections?

The obvious answer to this question is Wordle, but if you’ve already solved that problem today, the New York Times has other games. When it comes to word games, the NYTimes has the Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed, and Strands games, which are still in beta. If you want to get away from words, you can also try Tiles – a pattern matching game – or Sudoku.

Apart from the NYTimes, there is Semantle – where you have to reach the secret word by guessing its meaning. Spelling doesn’t matter in Semantle, rather you need to pay attention to the numerical value of your guesses to plot your way to the answer. If you prefer to keep the Connections format, it’s worth visiting Puzzgrid. You’ll find hundreds of Connections-style puzzles here, but the problem is that you only have three minutes to solve them.

(You can also just watch Only Connect on BBC iPlayer…)

If you’re in the mood to read, we explained why the NYTimes mini crosswords are a reliable joy and interviewed Jonathan Knight, head of games for the NYTimes.

Good luck solving today’s connections!