NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Mar 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 March? If this theme-guesser got you stuck in a web of false connections, we'll gladly help you untangle it. Not every link between words is a correct one, so be wary of tricky distractions.

With the help of this Connections guide, you'll be fooled no more. Grab a hint or two from the list below and tackle today's challenge.

In this guide:

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

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Grab the ropes.
• Green: These words are free of obligations.
• Blue: Add something, and you can drive them.
• Purple: Music, but it's missing something.
• Extra hint 1: 'Dump' and 'abandon' are in different groups.
• Extra hint 2: The yellow and purple categories each contain 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:Thread
• Green:Abandon
• Blue:Monster
• Purple:Maroon

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: Filament
• Green: Uninhibitedness
• Blue: Kinds Of Trucks
• Purple: Bands Minus The Number Five

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 March:

• Yellow: Filament (Fiber, Strand, String, Thread)
• Green: Uninhibitedness (Abandon, Freedom, Spontaneity, Unrestraint)
• Blue: Kinds Of Trucks (Dump, Garbage, Monster, Pickup)
• Purple: Bands Minus The Number Five (Ben Folds, Jackson, Maroon, Mc)

Sometimes the 'hidden word' categories are actually the easiest, and today was one of those days for me. Upon seeing 'garbage' and 'pickup', my mind went to 'truck' instantly, which then made it easy to add 'dump' and 'monster'. The rope-like category with its thread and string was also fairly simple - I just needed to find four words with roughly the same meaning. I would've found both categories even faster if it wasn't for the green category throwing in some false matches.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed 'abandon' and 'dump' as a potential pair, possibly together with 'strand'. If you weren't quick to notice the truck connection, this might understandably confuse you. Even after succesfully untangling these groups, I don't think the green category is a very obvious match - in my opinion, 'freedom, spontaneity, and unrestraint' come with a positive vibe, while 'abandon' has a negative one. 'Abandon' feels like the odd one out here.

I'm glad I caught the first three groups though, as the purple one isn't my jam. The Jackson 5 and Maroon 5 are famous enough, but I wouldn't have guessed the other two.

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!