Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Thursday May 8

Need a hint for today's Connections on Thursday, 8th May? The Connections solution is ridiculously well-hidden again, isn't it? If you can’t quite connect the dots, or should we say words, today, this Connections guide will help you out.

Take a few hints and try again, but no pressure! If you can't find the solution, scroll further down for the full Connections answers.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Thursday 8th 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 Thursday 8th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: They can be used to describe note-taking or story-crafting.
• Green: They're needed to play a classic tabletop game.
• Blue: Look for people.
• Purple: Find one word to paste behind all group members.
• Extra hint 1: Only the blue theme lacks a three-letter word.
• Extra hint 2: 'Pencil' and 'pen' 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:Pen
• Green:Cup
• Blue:Wick
• Purple:Joy

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: Commit To Paper
• Green: Needs For Playing Yahtzee
• Blue: Heroes Of Action Movie Franchises
• Purple: ___Stick

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 Thursday, 8th May:

• Yellow: Commit To Paper (Author, Compose, Pen, Write)
• Green: Needs For Playing Yahtzee (Cup, Dice, Pencil, Scorecard)
• Blue: Heroes Of Action Movie Franchises (Bond, Jones, Ocean, Wick)
• Purple: ___Stick (Candle, Chop, Joy, Yard)

Although it seems quite obvious in hindsight, the yellow and green groups weren't immediately clear to me. My initial Connections included 'write' and 'scoreboard' as well as 'pen' and 'pencil'. I even thought of 'Bond', 'author', and 'write' for a second, but then I told myself to slow down and look for more obvious matches first.

Re-focusing on 'write' and 'author', I quickly realised I could match four similar verbs if I added 'pen' and 'compose' to the group - thus excluding the rather confusing 'pencil'. Solving the yellow theme left me with a fairly obvious connection between scoreboard and pencil, which made me suspect a dice game theme, but as a non-Yahtzee player, I wasn't 100% sure.

Good thing James Bond and John Wick were still there, so I could solve the blue group first, then take a chance on the dice theme. No need to bother myself with purple today!

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!