NYT Connections hints and answers, Sunday Apr 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 Sunday, 20th April? Do not wave that white flag just yet. If a cryptic Connections theme is sabotaging your victory, this guide may turn the tide.

Who knows, you may be closer to solving today’s puzzle than you think. Perhaps all you need is the right hint or a small spoiler. Take a look at the hints and tips below, and see if you can find the solution after all.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Sunday 20th 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 Sunday 20th April

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Four ways of using your eyes.
• Green: Everything you need for a colourful clothing makeover.
• Blue: You can use the same verb to 'handle' every group member.
• Purple: Find one word to place behind all four group members.
• Extra hint 1: The yellow and purple themes contain two words starting with the same letter.
• Extra hint 2: 'Sock' and 'shirt' belong to different groups.

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

• Yellow:Gander
• Green:Shirt
• Blue:Egg
• Purple:Sock

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: Glimpse
• Green: Needs For Tie-Dyeing A Shirt
• Blue: Things You Can Crack
• Purple: Words Before “Hop”

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 Sunday, 20th April:

• Yellow: Glimpse (Gander, Glance, Look, Peep)
• Green: Needs For Tie-Dyeing A Shirt (Basin, Dye, Rubber Bands, Shirt)
• Blue: Things You Can Crack (Code, Egg, Joke, Whip)
• Purple: Words Before “Hop” (Bar, Bunny, Hip, Sock)

The yellow Connections theme was fairly easy after I noticed 'glance' and 'look', but the rest... Let's just say I needed a minute or ten to spot the purple theme. I only noticed 'hip hop' because I was specifically trying to extend some of the words. This is often used for the purple theme, so whenever you feel stuck, it's a good idea to try this.

With only eight words left I started to suspect a crafty connection between 'basin' and 'dye', but I still wasn't sure. Sometimes when a Connections theme covers a specific topic I solve it by thinking of a broader (but similar) theme, but this doesn't really work for tie-dyeing as some of the components hardly match a broader 'crafting' category - especially the shirt.

Ultimately I realised I could crack an egg as well as a joke, which led to solving the blue theme. It certainly wasn't easy to crack the code in today's Connections puzzle!

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!