NYT Connections hints and answers, Saturday Mar 8

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 Saturday, 8th March? Some days, the Connections puzzles are so difficult it almost feels unfair. This is all the more true when the difficulty is due to not knowing certain trivia - you can look all you want for hidden clues, but in such cases, it won't save you.

What will save you, however, is this handy guide. Here you've got all the hints and tips you need at your disposal. Let's tackle that puzzle!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Saturday 8th 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 Saturday 8th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: These words aren't genuine.
• Green: You may need this group when you do your laundry.
• Blue: This category has something to do with a guy named Bill.
• Purple: Think of a single word to place behind each member of this group.
• Extra hint 1: Each group contains at least one word with more than six letters.
• Extra hint 2: One of today's groups features science fiction movies.

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

• Yellow:Mock
• Green:Spin
• Blue:Bogus
• Purple:Juke

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: Faux
• Green: Washing Machine Cycles/Settings
• Blue: Words Said Frequently In The “Bill And Ted” Movies
• Purple: ___Box

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 Saturday, 8th March:

• Yellow: Faux (Artificial, Fake, Imitation, Mock)
• Green: Washing Machine Cycles/Settings (Bulky, Cotton, Delicate, Spin)
• Blue: Words Said Frequently In The “Bill And Ted” Movies (Bogus, Dude, Excellent, Totally)
• Purple: ___Box (Chatter, Juke, Shadow, Soap)

Today's yellow group was the first one I found, so no surprises there. I spotted 'fake' and 'imitation' first, after which it was easy to pick the other two. The green group was a bit harder and perhaps surprisingly so, as it was easy to make the initial connection. While I found 'cotton', 'delicate' and 'spin' fairly quickly, I couldn't decide on the fourth member. 'Bulky' sounded logical, but I couldn't remember ever seeing that word on a laundry machine - perhaps the laundry machines I've used are just weird. I considered adding 'soap' to this group instead, but it felt out of place as the other three are obviously settings, and soap isn't.

So I put the laundry on hold and decided to focus on potential soap connections, just to rule it out. Glancing over 'juke', I thought of 'jukebox', which then led to the discovery of 'soapbox', and ultimately the full purple category. Now I was left with a nearly-completed laundry batch and a bunch of words I couldn't make sense of at all.

Unfortunately, I've never heard of the 'Bill and Ted movies' in my life, so there was absolutely no way I would've ever guessed the blue group. I did suspect a connection between 'totally' and 'excellent', but that's hardly enough. Eventually, I took my chances with the bulky laundry and thus matched the green category. With only the blue group left, today's Connections puzzle was solved.

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!