NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Mar 24

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 Monday, 24th March? Sixteen words, four themes, and one major headache - if you can’t find the right links, that is. Not all Connections puzzles are at the same difficulty level, and whether you’ll find them easy or hard often depends on your knowledge and vocabulary, so it’s highly personal.

If today’s riddle has remained a mystery thus far, we’ll gladly nudge you in the right direction. Grab some hints and spoilers from this handy guide.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Monday 24th 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 Monday 24th March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Your nose won't like these words.
• Green: This isn't the most dynamic theme.
• Blue: These words will ease a parent's concerns... Or not.
• Purple: Does it come with layers?
• Extra hint 1: Only one theme contains two words that start with the same letter.
• Extra hint 2: While matching the word 'onion', think about the possibility to peel it.

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

• Yellow:Ripe
• Green:Level
• Blue:Everyone
• Purple:Henhouse

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: Bad-Smelling
• Green: Unfluctuating
• Blue: Who Video Games Are For, Per Esrb Ratings
• Purple: Things With Layers

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 Monday, 24th March:

• Yellow: Bad-Smelling (Foul, Rank, Ripe, Sour)
• Green: Unfluctuating (Constant, Level, Stable, Uniform)
• Blue: Who Video Games Are For, Per Esrb Ratings (Adults Only, Everyone, Teen, Mature)
• Purple: Things With Layers (Earth, Henhouse, Onion, Photoshop)

The first one I got today was the blue theme with its age-ratings. It was surprisingly simple for a blue category, but perhaps I got lucky. For me, seeing 'mature' and 'adults only' made me think of age-restrictions almost immediately, which was then quickly adjusted to ESRB ratings upon seeing 'teen' and 'everyone'.

I spotted 'stable' and 'constant' next, but got distracted by 'rank' and 'foul', which made me search for more nastiness. I must admit this one actually took me a while, as I didn't realise I should focus on bad smells rather than just signs of dirt and mold. This caused me to miss 'sour' at first, as I interpreted it as a flavour rather than a bad smell.

With only eight words remaining, matching the green group was easy, especially since I already had 'constant' and 'stable'. I wonder if I would've discovered the layers theme had it been necessary - it doesn't seem at all obvious, but perhaps with enough staring, the correct match might've come to mind.

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!