NYT Connections hints and answers, Thursday Apr 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 Thursday, 17th April? Connections puzzles aren’t easy, and take it from a veteran: they never will be, no matter how many you solve. But not to worry, for our daily Connections guide will always be here to help you.

Whether you’re close to solving today’s riddle or can’t find any clues at all, the hints below will push you towards victory.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Thursday 17th 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 Thursday 17th April

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: These four words describe the same part of your body.
• Green: Four parts of the same dish.
• Blue: They're similar to a keg.
• Purple: This one is about baseball.
• Extra hint 1: 'Trunk' and 'case' are in different groups.
• Extra hint 2: You'll find last names in today's puzzle.

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

• Yellow:Torso
• Green:Sauce
• Blue:Case
• Purple:Young

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: Central Section Of The Body
• Green: Components Of A Pizza
• Blue: Units Of Beer
• Purple: Baseball Greats

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 Thursday, 17th April:

• Yellow: Central Section Of The Body (Core, Midriff, Torso, Trunk)
• Green: Components Of A Pizza (Cheese, Crust, Sauce, Toppings)
• Blue: Units Of Beer (Case, Forty, Growler, Six-Pack)
• Purple: Baseball Greats (Bonds, Mantle, Trout, Young)

It was hard to miss the food in today's Connections, but matching the right types of food was quite challenging. The word 'crust' was a big help in finding the pizza theme though, and allowed me to rule out trout. I searched for something fishy next, but couldn't find anything - my handicap today was not knowing the first thing about baseball, let alone famous players, but I didn't realise it yet.

After setting the trout aside, I got fixated on 'case' and 'trunk' which also led me nowhere. I then moved on to 'torso' and 'midriff', found the similarity with 'core', and ultimately linked 'trunk' to complete the set. Removing trunk allowed me to interpret 'case' as a case of beer ('six-pack' was the biggest giveaway for me) and led to solving the blue group.

Even without the baseballers I hit a home run (that's one baseball term I do know), but it wasn't easy!

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!