Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Tuesday May 6

Need a hint for today's Connections on Tuesday, 6th May? If you aren't crushing it today, don't worry. Not every Connections puzzle is a walk in the park - in fact, most are not. Perhaps we can be of help in your search for today's word themes.

Take a hint from our list below, reveal one word for each of today's word groups, or do both, and let's find today's Connections answers!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Tuesday 6th 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 Tuesday 6th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Look for non-noisy situations.
• Green: These words belong to a popular sport.
• Blue: This theme is the opposite of large.
• Purple: It's all about the first half of the word.
• Extra hint 1: Only the purple theme contains two words starting with the same letter.
• Extra hint 2: Can you think of different words for 'tease'?

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

• Yellow:Peace
• Green:Tournament
• Blue:Compact
• Purple:Kidney

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: Silence
• Green: Tennis Competition Units
• Blue: Comparatively Small
• Purple: Starting With Synonyms For “Tease”

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, 6th May:

• Yellow: Silence (Calm, Hush, Peace, Still)
• Green: Tennis Competition Units (Game, Match, Set, Tournament)
• Blue: Comparatively Small (Baby, Compact, Minute, Toy)
• Purple: Starting With Synonyms For “Tease” (Kidney, Mockingbird, Razzmatazz, Ribbon)

Today's green theme was surprisingly easy for me, considering the 'tennis' theme and the fact that I know nothing about tennis. I saw the words 'match', 'tournament', and 'game', and just assumed there must be a 'sports competitions' theme. 'Set' was the only word that seemed to... match, so I gave it a try and got my first theme of the day, without even thinking about tennis.

Next up was yellow, starting with a similarity I noticed between 'peace' and 'calm'. With slightly-less-obvious matching words like 'toy' and 'baby', the blue theme was harder to solve, but with only eight words left, still manageable.

Now I didn't have to solve the purple theme anymore, but I did notice the common theme before I was down to the last four words. This was all thanks to mockingbird, which has such an obvious 'hidden word' quality it's hard to miss. It would've been tricky if I had only been given the likes of 'razzmatazz' and 'ribbon' to work with though!

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!