NYT Connections hints and answers, Thursday Feb 20

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, 20th February? One tricky theme and it's all over... Or not, if you've got this Connections guide to help you out. The NYT Connections puzzles often require a bit of help, and we're happy to provide it.

Would you rather have a hint, a small spoiler, or both? Whichever you prefer, you'll find them all below - plus an explanation of today's themes.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Thursday 20th 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 Thursday 20th February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: They're handy when you're in danger.
• Green: These words become relevant when you can't make it home.
• Blue: Think of the morning.
• Purple: These words are related to a very popular Netflix series.
• Extra hint 1: 'Sleep' and 'sunrise' are in different groups.
• Extra hint 2: The purple group's words are related to a game, too.

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

• Yellow:Flare
• Green:Sleep
• Blue:Dew
• Purple:Triangle

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: Alert
• Green: Spend The Night (At)
• Blue: Associated With Early Morning
• Purple: Cookie Cutter Shapes In “Squid Game”

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, 20th February:

• Yellow: Alert (Alarm, Flare, Signal, Sos)
• Green: Spend The Night (At) (Bunk, Crash, Sleep, Stay)
• Blue: Associated With Early Morning (Dew, Rooster, Sunrise, Worm)
• Purple: Cookie Cutter Shapes In “Squid Game” (Circle, Star, Triangle, Umbrella)

Apparently, 'star', 'sleep', and 'sunrise' do not form a matching group in today's Connections puzzle. I figured that out after I caught the green group instead, which obviously needed the word 'sleep'. I then grouped 'sunrise' with 'dew' and 'rooster', although I wasn't quite sure about the connection at that point - I was still missing the fourth member of the group. As I often do in such cases (when I don't have the yellow group yet), I looked for a different, easier match first, and found it in the signal words.

It's funny how I sometimes miss obvious things while the word soup is still quite big. With the yellow words removed, even though they had nothing to do with my previous struggle, I suddenly noticed the word 'worm' and how perfectly it would fit my blue ones. I probably wasn't among the early birds in solving this one!

Another funny thing in today's Connections; I had this feeling that the purple words were somehow connected, but I couldn't see the reason. Only when the purple words were left did I suddenly think: "Squid Game!" and wondered why I didn't notice it before. Thankfully, the Connections puzzle aren't quite as nerve-racking as that particular scene in the Netflix series.

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!