NYT Connections hints and answers, Wednesday Feb 19

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 Wednesday, 19th February? It happens all too often; you've nearly solved a Connections puzzle, but can't find the final word to one of the key themes. Hitting such a hurdle can be fun - nobody likes a puzzle that doesn't take any effort - but it can also become tedious.

If you're stuck, this Connections guide provides all the hints and minor spoilers you'll need to arrive at the correct answers.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Wednesday 19th 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 Wednesday 19th February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: You'll find them near the ocean.
• Green: Little accidents.
• Blue: This one's related to time.
• Purple: Think of a single extension to place behind each word in this group.
• Extra hint 1: To solve the purple theme, think of drinks and hairstyles.
• Extra hint 2: 'Nick' isn't about the name.

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

• Yellow:Dock
• Green:Nick
• Blue:Tick
• Purple:Mock

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: Structures By The Shore
• Green: Small Imperfection
• Blue: Sounds A Cuckoo Clock Makes
• Purple: ___Tail

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 Wednesday, 19th February:

• Yellow: Structures By The Shore (Boardwalk, Dock, Lighthouse, Wharf)
• Green: Small Imperfection (Dent, Ding, Nick, Scratch)
• Blue: Sounds A Cuckoo Clock Makes (Chime, Cuckoo, Tick, Tock)
• Purple: ___Tail (Cock, Mock, Pig, Pony)

For me, this Connections puzzle was on the easier side. The beach-buildings category consists of fairly common, similar words, and most 'at first glance' matches in the green and blue group turned out to be correct. By 'first glance matches', I'm referring to those words that seem like a great match upon spotting them, such as 'tick' and 'tock' or 'dent' and 'scratch'. Sometimes, such connections turn out to be false, but in today's puzzle they were mostly right.

There was one major trap to watch out for though; you might mistake 'pig', 'pony', and 'cock' for an animal theme, perhaps falsely matching them with 'cuckoo'. I think most people are familiar with cuckoo clocks, but if you're not, I can imagine how confusing this must be. You might've swapped 'cuckoo' for 'ding' (as in the time/clock-related 'ding, dong'), which would also be an understandable mistake.

Does that mean today's difficulty experience depends on your familiarity with cuckoo clocks? I think it does. Then again, if you drink a lot of cocktails, the purple category might've been a breeze for you, making the blue theme easier by extension.

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!