Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Sunday May 11

Need a hint for today's Connections on Sunday, 11th May? Creative Connections puzzles are fun, but they also tend to be more difficult. Instead of wishing for a synonyms-only edition, let’s just use a few hints from the list below.

Your brains may be closer to solving the puzzle than you think. Perhaps one good hint is really all you need!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Sunday 11th 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 Sunday 11th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: This theme is very cheerful.
• Green: Do this to avoid someone or something.
• Blue: Think about games.
• Purple: Perhaps this theme needs a mother.
• Extra hint 1: Goose and duck are in different groups.
• Extra hint 2: Only the green theme contains more than one word starting with the same letter.

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

• Yellow:Tickle
• Green:Duck
• Blue:Level
• Purple:Earth

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: Make Happy
• Green: Evade
• Blue: Common Video Game Features
• Purple: Mother ___

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, 11th May:

• Yellow: Make Happy (Delight, Please, Suit, Tickle)
• Green: Evade (Dodge, Duck, Shake, Skirt)
• Blue: Common Video Game Features (Boss, Level, Health, Power-Up)
• Purple: Mother ___ (Earth, Goose, May I, Superior)

A video game theme is just my thing, so I had no trouble with today's blue theme. It would be perfectly understandable to create a false match between 'boss' and 'superior' though! I guess 'dodge' could be associated with video games too, but not as clearly as the other four words.

Speaking of which, I found 'dodge' and its synonyms far easier than the yellow theme today. I suspected 'tickle' and 'delight' to match, but I got stuck thinking of a suit you can wear. I also didn't interpret 'please' as a verb initially, but more as a 'please and thank you'.

Luckily I did eventually complete the yellow group too, otherwise I would've continued to struggle with purple for quite some time. Perhaps your motherly instincts were better than mine and led you to the purple theme's solution - I'd be quite impressed if that's the case!

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!