NYT Connections hints and answers, Tuesday Mar 4

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Sunday 27th April!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Tuesday, 4th March? While the yellow 'easy' themes are usually straightforward enough, the find-the-common-ground puzzler's blue and purple categories typically form the true challenge. Just two confusing words, each belonging to a different group, can ruin your chances of victory.

Our Connections hints aren't necessarily a shortcut to victory as you still need to do some thinking. But then again, it wouldn't be much fun if we just gave you the answers, would it? Here's how to find today's answers with every 'eureka' moment included.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Tuesday 4th March
• 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 Tuesday 4th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: This theme is skin-related.
• Green: When you have a bad hair day...
• Blue: Think of a famous writer, then think of his famous characters.
• Purple: Find the one word to place behind each of the group members.
• Extra hint 1: Only one group contains both 't' and 'm' as a starting letter.
• Extra hint 2: 'Twist' and 'tangle' are in different groups.

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

• Yellow:Fresh
• Green:Mop
• Blue:Twist
• Purple:Supply

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: Adjectives For Nice Skin
• Green: Mess Of Hair
• Blue: Dickens Characters
• Purple: ___ Chain

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 Tuesday, 4th March:

• Yellow: Adjectives For Nice Skin (Dewy, Fresh, Glowing, Smooth)
• Green: Mess Of Hair (Mat, Mop, Tangle, Thatch)
• Blue: Dickens Characters (Bucket, Pip, Scrooge, Twist)
• Purple: ___ Chain (Daisy, Food, Mountain, Supply)

One of the first potential connections I spotted was already a false one: 'twist' and 'tangle'. This was quickly followed by 'bucket' and 'mop', which I tried to pair with 'fresh', 'glowing', and 'dewy'. However, since that obviously didn't tally up, I suddenly realised that the latter three described a clean surface, and would fit very well with 'smooth'. Honestly I didn't even think of 'skin' before I handed it in.

When the mop and bucket combo didn't work out, I started thinking of the mop's base material and how it might be related to 'thatch', which then led me to 'twisted strings' and ultimately 'messy hair'. Then, and only then, did I finally see the Scrooge, Pip, and Twist connection. I love Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, and especially Great Expectations, but unfortunately haven't read Bleak House yet (a shame, I know), so I couldn't find the fourth group member. Time to focus on purple...

Funnily enough, I also matched 'mountain', 'supply', and 'food' fairly early on but not for the right reason; I was thinking of 'food supply' and a 'mountain of food' and felt like there could be more to it. That left me with only 'daisy' and 'bucket' to assign, so I did what any veteran Connections player would do: I wasted one try on getting them wrong, then won the game by getting them right.

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!