NYT Connections hints and answers, Friday Feb 14

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 Friday, 14th February? If you're on a Connections victory streak, we'll help you keep it unbroken. And if you're not, let today be the first day of your new victory streak. All it takes is a few hints from this handy Connections guide.

We've listed some helpful hints below, plus some spoilers - don't worry, they're only visible if you click on them. Let's solve today's puzzle!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Friday 14th February
• 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 Friday 14th February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: When you're being overprotective, possibly spoiling someone...
• Green: Think of an animal species.
• Blue: This may result in a jump scare.
• Purple: Homophones!
• Extra hint 1: 'Bae' and 'baby' do not belong to the same group.
• Extra hint 2: There are no words starting with 's' in the yellow group.

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

• Yellow:Baby
• Green:Shed
• Blue:Boo
• Purple:See

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: Mollycoddle
• Green: Things A Rattlesnake Does
• Blue: Words Said To An Unsuspecting Person
• Purple: Homophones Of Bodies Of Water

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 Friday, 14th February:

• Yellow: Mollycoddle (Baby, Humor, Indulge, Pamper)
• Green: Things A Rattlesnake Does (Hiss, Rattle, Shed, Slither)
• Blue: Words Said To An Unsuspecting Person (Boo, Gotcha, Guess Who, Surprise)
• Purple: Homophones Of Bodies Of Water (Bae, Creak, See, Straight)

I'm not sure whether to applaud or curse the person who decided to put 'baby', 'bae', and 'boo' in this Connections puzzle - on a Valentine's Day, of all days! Once I realised the lack of a fourth group member, I dropped the whole 'names for a significant other' thing for a while and solved the rattlesnake group instead - the easiest one, in my opinion. I was convinced it was just a 'snake' theme at first, eyeing the connection between 'baby' and 'rattle' instead, but ultimately realised that today's rattle was of a different kind.

I then went on to solve the blue theme (starting with 'gotcha' and 'surpise'), which allowed me to separate 'boo' from what I should call the 'fake lovers group'. Being left with only yellow and purple words, I finally noticed that 'baby' was a verb and 'bae' a homophone for 'bay'. At last!

In hindsight, I should have suspected 'bae' from the start as the NYT often uses the more modern 'slang' words in their trickier, hidden themes. That isn't always the case, of course, but it's good to be extra suspicious of words that seem a bit out of place like that.

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!