NYT Connections hints and answers, Friday Feb 21

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 Friday, 21st February? Find four words with a common theme, repeat that three more times, and you're done. Don't be fooled though, Connections puzzles are notoriously difficult, especially if today's themes contain unfamiliar topics.

But that's no reason to lose your Connections victory streak. Here's a list of hints to help you find the puzzle solution.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Friday 21st 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 Friday 21st February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: This one is about solving problems.
• Green: These words will help you get fresh food.
• Blue: This group makes adjustments to an image.
• Purple: Think of things you can use with your hands.
• Extra hint 1: One of the double words belongs to the blue group.
• Extra hint 2: In this case, the 'lasso' and 'magic wand' aren't used by cowboys or wizards.

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

• Yellow:Fix
• Green:Gather
• Blue:Lasso
• Purple:Guitar

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: Way Of Solving A Problem
• Green: Collect, As From An Orchard
• Blue: Photoshop Tools
• Purple: Objects That May Be Right- Or Left-Handed

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 Friday, 21st February:

• Yellow: Way Of Solving A Problem (Answer, Fix, Remedy, Solution)
• Green: Collect, As From An Orchard (Gather, Harvest, Pick, Reap)
• Blue: Photoshop Tools (Eraser, Eyedropper, Lasso, Magic Wand)
• Purple: Objects That May Be Right- Or Left-Handed (Baseball Glove, Can Opener, Golf Club, Guitar)

I can't imagine finding this puzzle easy if you don't have much knowledge of photoshop. If you do, you're in luck, as you'll quickly realise that 'lasso' and 'magic wand' are photoshop tools, but otherwise, you might wonder why a lasso doesn't match with a golf club (as an object used with your hands) or a word like 'harvest' (as a means of gathering something). I also spot a nice, but utterly false, cowboy-connection between lasso and guitar here.

The one thing that may help your thought process if you have some knowledge about photoshop is the lack of obvious matches in the purple group. As long as you place 'eraser' and 'eyedropper' together, it seems illogical to add a word like 'baseball glove' to that theme. At least 'Magic wand' sounds like you can use it to enhance something, doesn't it?

As for myself, I happen to be quite familiar with photoshop, and more so with digital drawing, which made it easy to spot the real meaning of a word like lasso in this Connections puzzle. But since the purple category is a bit vague, I certainly would've struggled if the blue category wasn't as clear to me.

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!