NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Mar 10

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 Monday, 10th March? If today's word mesh is too messy, and you can't find the four overarching themes, don't give up hope. With some help from this Connections guide, there's always light at the end of the wordy tunnel.

Perhaps you just need one good hint, but if today's puzzle is particularly troublesome, we can always give you more. Let's keep the victory streak ongoing.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Monday 10th 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 Monday 10th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: This is a feline theme.
• Green: Smile!
• Blue: Search for famous monuments.
• Purple: Think of a funny movie.
• Extra hint 1: Each theme contains two words starting with the same letter, except blue.
• Extra hint 2: 'Mona Lisa' and 'Tower of Pisa' don't belong to the same group.

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

• Yellow:Ragamuffin
• Green:Mona Lisa
• Blue:Liberty Bell
• Purple:Rug

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: Cat Breeds
• Green: Famous Smiles
• Blue: Attractions Iconically Different From Their Original Forms
• Purple: Associated With “The Dude” Lebowski

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 Monday, 10th March:

• Yellow: Cat Breeds (Ragamuffin, Russian Blue, Sphynx, Turkish Angora)
• Green: Famous Smiles (Cheshire Cat, Comedy Mask, Joker, Mona Lisa)
• Blue: Attractions Iconically Different From Their Original Forms (Liberty Bell, Venus De Milo, Statue Of Liberty, Tower Of Pisa)
• Purple: Associated With “The Dude” Lebowski (Bathrobe, Bowling, Rug, White Russian)

Today's Connections puzzle was out to get me with 'Mona Lisa' and 'Tower of Pisa', but although they did catch my eye as a potential 'Italian monuments/symbols' category, nothing else seemed to fit. I moved on to the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo as a potential artsy match, but again - no other members. I reckoned the latter could be a link with the Sphinx (both being ancient works), but alas - no third and fourth connection again.

Luckily, Venus and the Sphinx directed me towards a 'monuments' category, so I quickly matched them with the Statue of Liberty and the Tower of Pisa. After one failed attempt (whoops), I swapped the Sphinx for the Liberty Bell and completed blue. Next, I realised that the Mona Lisa, famous for her mysterious smile, has a clear connection to the Cheshire Cat, which then allowed me to completed green too.

This left me with two tricky themes - at least for me. I started to suspect a cat breed theme, but I'm not familiar with cat breeds, so it was hard to say for sure. And although I did think of The Big Lebowski when I saw the words 'bathrobe' and 'bowling', I wasn't sure about the remaining two words for this one either - it's been a while since I last saw that movie. Ultimately, I decided to take the gamble and put 'bathrobe', 'bowling', 'rug' (doesn't sound like a cat), and 'white Russian' (lucky guess) together.

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!