NYT Connections hints and answers, Friday Feb 28

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, 28th February? Too many words, too many potential combinations, and not enough clues; if you're stuck on a Connections puzzle, we'll get you unstuck. You may be surprised how quickly you can go from 'this doesn't make sense' to finding the purple theme.

Our Connections aid comes in the form of hints, small spoilers, and tips. Pick a few, or use them all - the choice is yours.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Friday 28th 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 28th February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: If you're in doubt, this is what you do.
• Green: These words provide an informal way of addressing someone.
• Blue: Think of smarts and logic.
• Purple: These words are parts of metaphors.
• Extra hint 1: The metaphors in the purple group can't be stopped.
• Extra hint 2: Each word in the purple group has a unique starting letter.

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

• Yellow:Waver
• Green:Angel
• Blue:Mind
• Purple:Bell

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: Be Indecisive
• Green: Lovely Person
• Blue: Lucidity
• Purple: Components Of Metaphors For Things That Can’T Be Undone

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, 28th February:

• Yellow: Be Indecisive (Hesitate, Waffle, Waver, Yo-Yo)
• Green: Lovely Person (Angel, Dear, Doll, Peach)
• Blue: Lucidity (Marbles, Mind, Sense, Wits)
• Purple: Components Of Metaphors For Things That Can’T Be Undone (Bell, Egg, Genie, Toothpaste)

I don't know why my brain is always drawn to the food, but today was no different: I immediately connected 'egg' and 'waffle', only to discover the utter lack of a third and fourth group member. No 'breakfast' category today. Luckily, I connected 'mind' and 'sense' next, after which it was easy to complete the blue group.

I must admit that it took me a while to find the green theme after that, as I failed to think of terms of endearment upon seeing 'angel' and 'peach'. Though it clicked eventually, I really had to search for that connection - I finally had a eureka moment when I put 'dear' and 'doll' together. It's the type of thing that would've been super easy if you use such terms of endearment in your daily life. Otherwise, your mind will probably get stuck on winged creatures and fruit too.

This doesn't happen often, but I was left with yellow and purple as the final themes today. I blame 'waffle' and 'yo-yo', which are easily interpreted as food and a toy rather than indecisiveness. Safe to say, I caught the connection between 'waver' and 'hesitate' first, and only discovered the remaining two members upon closer inspection. It's lucky that I found the other three groups, because purple is really difficult today - I'm not sure I would've found it otherwise! The words are not just 'parts of a metaphor', but parts of rather specific and somewhat uncommon metaphors... Hats off to you if you did match the purple theme.

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!