NYT Connections hints and answers, Sunday Mar 23

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, 23rd March? This Connections guide will reveal all answers, but even better; it provides a bunch of hints to help you solve the puzzle yourself, which is the recommended (and most fun) way to go.

Take one hint, two hints, or - why not - six hints from this guide to arrive at today’s puzzle solution. Defeat? We don’t know the word.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Sunday 23rd 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 Sunday 23rd March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: These words will have you transfixed.
• Green: Does it have wings?
• Blue: Add something, and you've got four kinds of clocks.
• Purple: Think of a popular children's song.
• Extra hint 1: Only one group doesn't contain two or more words starting with the same letter.
• Extra hint 2: One of today's themes requires clapping your hands.

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

• Yellow:Entrance
• Green:Fairy
• Blue:Smart
• Purple:Buttons

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: Captivate
• Green: Things With Wings
• Blue: Words That Modify “Watch”
• Purple: Words Repeated In “Miss Mary Mack”

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, 23rd March:

• Yellow: Captivate (Absorb, Entrance, Grab, Rivet)
• Green: Things With Wings (Airplane, Fairy, Fly, Hospital)
• Blue: Words That Modify “Watch” (Pocket, Smart, Stop, Wrist)
• Purple: Words Repeated In “Miss Mary Mack” (Back, Black, Buttons, Mack)

Upon seeing today's Connections, my eyes were drawn to 'fairy' and 'fly', which led me to believe there might be a 'things that can fly' group. Besides airplane, however, there was no suitable group member, so I had to set this one aside. As I was eyeing 'grab' and 'absorb', I suddenly thought of 'pocket watch' and 'smartwatch', which helped me solve the blue group.

Moving back to the 'flying' and 'absorbing' themes, I started to think that maybe I was interpreting them incorrectly. I then thought of 'absorbing someone's attention' and how it's similar to grabbing their attention and riveting their attention - thus captivating them. I stared, stared, and then stared some more at the remaining words, before I finally realised that I'd been missing 'entrance' (as in 'ensnare'/'mesmerize') all this time - I was way too focused on the 'way in' interpretation.

With only eight words left, I ultimately realised that hospitals have wings, too, and so I solved today's puzzle. Not knowing children's songs like 'Miss Mary Mack' didn't do me any favours today - this one was tricky!

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!