NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Feb 17

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, 17th February? If today's themes are right up your alley, you're in luck... but since you're here, maybe they're not. Don't worry though, as this Connections guide will help you find the answers.

Take a look at our handy hints below or click on a spoiler or two - whatever you need to beat today's Connections. Good luck!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Monday 17th 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 Monday 17th February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: After a few months of hard work, you deserve a...
• Green: Think of a river.
• Blue: These words are related to the same sport.
• Purple: This group is a bit fishy.
• Extra hint 1: The yellow group is the only one without a word starting with 's'.
• Extra hint 2: 'Turkey' and 'strike' belong to the same group.

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

• Yellow:Leave
• Green:Snake
• Blue:Strike
• Purple:Sword

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: Time Off
• Green: Follow A Meandering Course
• Blue: Bowling Results
• Purple: ___Fish

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, 17th February:

• Yellow: Time Off (Break, Leave, Rest, Vacation)
• Green: Follow A Meandering Course (Curve, Snake, Weave, Wind)
• Blue: Bowling Results (Double, Spare, Strike, Turkey)
• Purple: ___Fish (Blow, Cat, Gold, Sword)

As is usually the case, today's yellow group is matched by its literal meaning. With only a few 'false' connections to distract you, such as 'break' and 'strike', it probably doesn't take long to spot its four members. The green theme took slightly longer for me as its members come with various interpretations, but the word 'curve' pointed me in the right direction - it would've been even easier if the word 'meander' had been included in the word soup rather than the group name though. The NYT was clever to add 'snake', 'cat', and 'turkey' as a fake group, but since there's clearly no fourth animal, it wasn't something I got stuck on.

That said, I'm not familair with bowling lingo, so the blue group was a bit too foreign for me today. Luckily, the word 'fish' popped up in my head when I stared at 'cat', from where it was easy to see 'catfish', 'blowfish, and 'goldfish' as well.

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!