Today's NYT Connections hints and answers, Friday May 16

Need a hint for today's Connections on Friday, 16th May? If the theme-guessing challenge feels quite hopeless today, our advice is to take your time, use a few hints, and try again. Your 'eureka' moment could be quite close!

Still no luck? We've got a long list of hints below, so be sure to use all of them before you throw in the towel.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Friday 16th 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 Friday 16th May

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Look for things that can grow.
• Green: These words are 'final'.
• Blue: Think of a cow, but male.
• Purple: It's all about the second half.
• Extra hint 1: There's no movie theme in today's Connections.
• Extra hint 2: One group contains only four- and five-letter words.

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

• Yellow:Vine
• Green:Scrap
• Blue:Rodeo
• Purple:Kubrick

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: Kinds Of Plants
• Green: Discontinue
• Blue: Associated With Bulls
• Purple: Ending With Building Materials

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, 16th May:

• Yellow: Kinds Of Plants (Herb, Shrub, Tree, Vine)
• Green: Discontinue (Dissolve, End, Scrap, Sunset)
• Blue: Associated With Bulls (Michael Jordan, Rodeo, Taurus, Wall Street)
• Purple: Ending With Building Materials (Hollywood, Hourglass, Kubrick, Neuroplastic)

I created a 'famous places and famous people' group fairly quickly today, but I was equally quick to realise that the match was way too weak. Funnily enough, 'Michael Jordan and Wall Street' and 'Hollywood and Kubrick' did indeed belong together, just not as a full group. I didn't realise that yet though, so I set it aside.

Starting to explore the shrubbery instead, I completed the yellow theme and moved on to 'finales' next. I've got to admit I needed a minute to add 'sunset' to the green theme - it's not quite as obvious an ending as... well, as the word 'end'.

Although I did notice a 'bull' link between taurus and rodeo, I didn't get any further than that before I spotted the glass, wood, plastic, and brick of the purple theme. The purple theme only needed a sharp eye, whereas the blue theme required knowledge - because of that, I declare the blue theme the hardest one 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!