NYT Connections hints and answers, Sunday Mar 9

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 Sunday, 9th March? No matter how cunning the Connections puzzles get, there's always a way to find the solution. Six ways, if you count our list of hints below, plus another four in the form of minor spoilers.

You may not need every hint given in this guide, but don't feel bad if you do! Connections puzzles are notoriously difficult, and nobody can guess every single one of them, every single day. Let's help you solve today's puzzle.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Sunday 9th 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 Sunday 9th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Search for devices to use with your computer.
• Green: If you want to build something, this will probably come in handy.
• Blue: This group is about providing a service.
• Purple: Do I hear music?
• Extra hint 1: Only the purple group lacks a word starting with 's'.
• Extra hint 2: One of these groups is connected to the year 1982.

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

• Yellow:Mouse
• Green:Brick
• Blue:Solid
• Purple:Centerfold

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: Computer Input Devices
• Green: Building Materials
• Blue: Helpful Deed
• Purple: #1 Songs From 1982

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 Sunday, 9th March:

• Yellow: Computer Input Devices (Microphone, Mouse, Scanner, Tablet)
• Green: Building Materials (Brick, Concrete, Metal, Stone)
• Blue: Helpful Deed (Favor, Kindness, Service, Solid)
• Purple: #1 Songs From 1982 (Abracadabra, Centerfold, Mickey, Physical)

As you may already know, in NYT Connections puzzles, the category colours indicate the difficulty level, with yellow being the easiest and purple being the hardest. That said, our personal experience is often a bit different from the intended difficulty level as some categories may be closer to your personal interests or contain more familiar words - yellow can sometimes be harder than green, for that reason. Still, it hardly ever happens that three Connections categories feel like the same difficulty level, but that's exactly what happened to me today.

I caught the green category first, followed by blue, and then yellow, but this order was mostly based on coincidence as it didn't require much detective work. Both the yellow and green group contain items belonging to a broader category while the blue group is just synonyms - I couldn't tell you which one is supposed to be the hardest if I didn't already know. I find the blue category's theme particularly remarkable as synonyms are usually reserved for yellow and green.

Perhaps to compensate, the purple category was rather tough today - at least for me, since I don't know many songs from 1982. Of course, the year doesn't really matter that much, but I don't know many songs from the '80s either. Luckily, when you've got three categories down, there's no need to rack your brains over the fourth one, so it all worked out in the end.

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!