Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Friday May 2

Need a hint for today's Connections on Friday, 2nd May? The NYT Connections puzzles require not only logic, but also understanding, a broad vocabulary, good knowledge of history, and an eye for hidden things. But even if you possess all that, it’s not always enough to find the solution...

And that’s where this handy Connections guide comes in. Grab a few hints or look at some spoilers (don't worry, you won't see them unless you want to) and tackle today's Connections challenge.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Friday 2nd May
• What are today's Connections groups?
• What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

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 Friday 2nd May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Find the sculptures.
• Green: Look for structures to save buildings from collapsing.
• Blue: Meat for grilling.
• Purple: Add a body part at the end.
• Extra hint 1: 'Goose' and 'dog' don't belong together.
• Extra hint 2: It'll be useful to know different words for sausage.

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

• Yellow:Statue
• Green:Post
• Blue:Dog
• Purple:Goose

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: Kinds Of Carvings
• Green: Pillar
• Blue: BBQ Offering
• Purple: ___Neck

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 Friday, 2nd May:

• Yellow: Kinds Of Carvings (Bust, Relief, Statue, Torso)
• Green: Pillar (Brace, Post, Prop, Support)
• Blue: BBQ Offering (Dog, Link, Rib, Wing)
• Purple: ___Neck (Bottle, Break, Goose, Turtle)

I'd like to think I'm somewhat well-versed in art, but I still had some trouble with the yellow theme due to the word 'relief' - it's just hard to think of its secondary meaning as a wall-mounted sculpture when synonyms like 'respite' instantly pop up in your head. I only realised the intended meaning after I started looking for a type of sculpture specifically.

I also had trouble with the final member of the BBQ group. I realised fairly early on that an animal match wasn't meant to be, but that got me wondering: should I add one of them to the blue theme's grill? I got really close to sacrificing the goose, but then I thought of 'hot dogs' (which I never eat, let along put on a grill), and suddenly it all made sense.

Turns out the goose was there for its neck, but I didn't need to figure that out as I solved the green theme before the purple one. I was wondering if the goose and the turtle had something in common besides being animals, and they do indeed.

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!