NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Apr 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 Monday, 14th April? This selection of Connections words are tricky ones indeed - if you've been working hard to maintain a perfect score and don't want any mistakes, you're in the right place.

The following guide presents hints on all of today's Connections categories, from the easy Yellow words to the tough Purple group. We've also presented the answers for you in case you don't want to do any guessing.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Monday 14th April
• 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 14th April

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: To regulate or keep under control.
• Green: You need to sign up for a seat to attend these.
• Blue: Ever played that game from the '80s about going west in a wagon?
• Purple: All of these are connected with a four-letter name that rhymes with "board."
• Extra hint 1: The four-letter name for the Purple group is actually one of the words in today's Connections.
• Extra hint 2: Director and President are in the same group.

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

• Yellow:Stop
• Green:Movie
• Blue:Ford
• Purple:President

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: Restrict
• Green: Ticketed Events
• Blue: Associated With The Game The Oregon Trail
• Purple: What “Ford” Might Refer To

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, 14th April:

• Yellow: Restrict (Block, Check, Dam, Stop)
• Green: Ticketed Events (Concert, Game, Movie, Play)
• Blue: Associated With The Game The Oregon Trail (Dysentery, Ford, Hunt, Oxen)
• Purple: What “Ford” Might Refer To (Actor, Car, Director, President)

Connections is an overwhelmingly American game, as evidenced by today's Blue group. The Oregon Trail was a common fixture in all computer classrooms of the late '80s and early '90s in the US, to the point that "you died of dysentery" is now a meme amongst Millennials who grew up in that era. It definitely wasn't as big outside of the US, however, so I can see today's Blue group giving non-Americans some trouble - along with anyone who didn't play The Oregon Trail.

Aside from that, today's Connections isn't too bad, though it took me some time to figure out the links between all of the "Ford" words in the Purple group. It's also very cheeky of Connections to put the word "Ford" into the actual puzzle itself - I suppose that fording rivers is something you had to do in The Oregon Trail, though.

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!