NYT Connections hints and answers, Tuesday Mar 18

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 Tuesday, 18th March? Grab four words to form a matching set, then repeat this three times. That's basically all you need to do to solve a Connections puzzle, but beware; it's not as easy as it sounds.

What is all too easy, is getting stuck on a false match between words. Another common Connections problem is lacking specific knowledge needed to complete a certain theme or failing to find hidden words. Whatever is causing your current connectivity issues though, this guide will help you find the solution.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Tuesday 18th 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 Tuesday 18th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: These words stand out from the crowd.
• Green: Wait... isn't that another language?
• Blue: Some creatures remain the same.
• Purple: A singular use of these words would be rather different.
• Extra hint 1: 'Die' and 'dice' are in different groups.
• Extra hint 2: The animals stick together, but beware of their form.

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

• Yellow:Special
• Green:Angst
• Blue:Shrimp
• Purple:Lice

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: Exceptional
• Green: German Words
• Blue: Plural Animals Identical To Their Singular Forms
• Purple: Plural Words That Are Very Different From Their Singular Forms

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 Tuesday, 18th March:

• Yellow: Exceptional (Remarkable, Singular, Special, Unique)
• Green: German Words (Angst, Die, Kinder, Wurst)
• Blue: Plural Animals Identical To Their Singular Forms (Deer, Sheep, Shrimp, Squid)
• Purple: Plural Words That Are Very Different From Their Singular Forms (Dice, Lice, Mice, Oxen)

I found today's yellow group exceptionally fast, mainly because they stood out the most. It took me a bit longer to separate the green words from all the animals though - I got stuck on some false 'food' themes due to 'wurst'. Then I suddenly realised that 'kinder' means 'children' in German and was quick to add 'die' and 'angst' after - for once my six years of German lessons came in handy.

With food still fresh on my mind, however, I almost matched the right group for the wrong reason; I considered the blue words to be 'commonly consumed', but not the purple ones. I was ready to hand it in, too, but then I noticed 'oxen' and suddenly realised that oxen-tail soup is a thing, so my reasoning didn't hold up. Dang.

I then tried to add 'lice, mice, and dice' together since they sound alike, and while looking for a fourth member, it suddenly dawned on me that they're the only four plural words (together with oxen) if you take the other ones as singular. And there you have it; one set changes in plural form, the other one doesn't. Very creative, NYT!

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!