NYT Connections hints and answers, Thursday Mar 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 March? If you can’t capture two or more Connections categories today, it’ll be hard to solve the puzzle. But before you give up, let us offer you a helping hand. Together we will conquer this theme-guesser!

After all, no Connections puzzle is impossible when you’ve got a bunch of hints to lift the veil. Scroll down to find a full list of hints, tips, and more.

In this guide:

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

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: These words might be used describe an expressive person.
• Green: Think of water.
• Blue: A thread, but differently.
• Purple: You could bottle 'em up.
• Extra hint 1: Only one group contains two words starting with the same letter.
• Extra hint 2: 'Loud' and 'sound' are in different groups.

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

• Yellow:Loud
• Green:Channel
• Blue:Extension
• Purple:Message

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: Outspoken
• Green: Bodies Of Water
• Blue: Kinds Of Cords
• Purple: Things In Bottles

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 March:

• Yellow: Outspoken (Direct, Frank, Loud, Vocal)
• Green: Bodies Of Water (Bay, Channel, Sound, Strait)
• Blue: Kinds Of Cords (Bungee, Extension, Spinal, Umbilical)
• Purple: Things In Bottles (Genie, Lightning, Message, Ship)

Thanks, brain, for immediately matching 'loud' with 'sound'. It didn't help that 'sound' in the 'bodies of water' group had me utterly confused - I was quick to spot the other three water-words, but I've honestly never heard of a sound in that way - I'd just call that a fjord or a lagoon, depending on its geographical location. As I set the blue group aside, I did manage to find yellow, which allowed me to separate loud from sound.

I also spotted 'umbilical cord' fairly easily - I mean, what other uses do we have for 'umbilical'? The 'cord' theme was quickly confirmed by 'spinal cord', which made it possible to match the rest of the theme. Only purple and a nearly-solved blue group left!

It's a good thing that purple was doable today, because I still couldn't find the fourth body of water. After dismissing lamps, wishes, and Disney movies, my brain was able to drop the 'genie in a bottle' association, which was confirmed by 'message in a bottle'. Got the other two shortly after, and so I finally found my 'sound' water.

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!