Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Wednesday May 7

Need a hint for today's Connections on Wednesday, 7th May? If the Connections words seem to be conspiring against you today, have no fear; a few hints and sneak peeks will surely turn the tables.

In this daily Connections guide, you'll find an expansive list of hints to choose from. Not even the purple theme will escape you today!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Wednesday 7th 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 Wednesday 7th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: It was bad, but now it's gotten better...
• Green: These words may introduce something that doesn't belong to the group.
• Blue: Think of tarot cards.
• Purple: Do I hear a homophone?
• Extra hint 1: Only the green group contains two words starting with the same letter.
• Extra hint 2: Try matching the plurals.

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

• Yellow:Mend
• Green:Besides
• Blue:Swords
• Purple:Choral

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: Get Better, As A Broken Bone
• Green: Not Including
• Blue: Tarot Minor Arcana Suits
• Purple: Homophones Of Gemstones

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 Wednesday, 7th May:

• Yellow: Get Better, As A Broken Bone (Heal, Knit, Mend, Recover)
• Green: Not Including (Besides, But, Except, Save)
• Blue: Tarot Minor Arcana Suits (Cups, Pentacles, Swords, Wands)
• Purple: Homophones Of Gemstones (Choral, Opel, Purl, Quarts)

Thanks to the presence of 'but' and 'besides', finding my first Connections group wasn't too hard today. I had more trouble with the yellow theme as 'knit' and 'mend' initially pointed me to 'making and/or fixing clothing'. Only when I couldn't find the full group did I notice the similarity with 'recover' and 'heal'.

With only eight words left, my lack of tarot card knowledge didn't trouble me much. I was already putting a tentative 'fantasy story props' category together when I realised how similar 'purl' sounded to 'pearl'. As is often the case with unusual words, I suspected 'purl' was just there to fit a secretive purple theme, so I kept looking for more homophones and quickly collected the other gemstones.

I think I would've solved this Connections puzzles even if the purple theme had been harder, as taking a gamble on fantasy-related words (and also plurals) probably would've worked out for me. Next time, I may not be so lucky!

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!