Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Wednesday May 14

Need a hint for today's Connections on Wednesday, 14th May? Connections puzzles can be incredibly difficult to solve, but you're not thinking of quitting, are you? Perhaps you're closer to finding the correct themes than you think.

A hint or two (or five, or six) could make all the difference. Take a look at this Connections guide, and let's give it another go!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Wednesday 14th 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 Wednesday 14th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: This theme may reel you in...
• Green: Do you see anything Greek?
• Blue: Do I hear a talking animal?
• Purple: It's all about the sound.
• Extra hint 1: The two longest words are in the same group.
• Extra hint 2: Only the blue group contains two words 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:Wick
• Green:Kilo
• Blue:Dumbo
• Purple:Knee

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: Absorb Using Capillary Action
• Green: Greek Prefixes
• Blue: Titular Talking Animals Of Film
• Purple: Starting With Silent Letters

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 Wednesday, 14th May:

• Yellow: Absorb Using Capillary Action (Draw, Pull, Suck, Wick)
• Green: Greek Prefixes (Hyper, Kilo, Meta, Neo)
• Blue: Titular Talking Animals Of Film (Babe, Bolt, Dumbo, Ted)
• Purple: Starting With Silent Letters (Gnome, Knee, Mnemonic, Psyche)

I didn't set a timer, but it definitely took me a minute to find my first Connections theme today. I blame it all on 'wick', which made me look for cords and cute villages. After I gathered the other three words, however, it became clear that 'wick' was meant to be a verb.

I also noticed 'Dumbo' fairly early on, but I needed a closer look to find the other talking animals as I'm less familiar with them. Still, I suspect most people have seen at least a few of the relevant movies, so I don't think the blue theme was particularly difficult today.

Just when I started thinking of a 'Greek/Ancient origins' theme, based on psyche and hyper, did I suddenly realise that 'gnome' stands out for its silent start. Once you think of something like that, it's impossible not to find the rest of the group, isn't it? I'd say the silent letters were a bit more obvious, making the green theme the trickiest today.

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!