NYT Connections hints and answers, Monday Mar 31

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, 31st March? Some Connections themes are based on logic while others demand pop-cultural knowledge or a broad vocabulary. If today’s puzzle doesn't play to your strengths, you can stare and think as long as you like, but it'll be very hard, if not impossible, to arrive at the answer.

So, before you become mummified, let’s get you some hints to help you out. And remember; once you solve three Connections themes, you’ve got the fourth one too, so don’t let one tricky theme get the best of you.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Monday 31st 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 31st March

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: It was just there, and now it's not - all due to these words.
• Green: There's... more to this group than you think.
• Blue: This theme is related to money.
• Purple: Find one word to place behind the group members.
• Extra hint 1: The entries consisting of two words belong to two different themes.
• Extra hint 2: 'Deposit' and 'put away' are in different groups.

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

• Yellow:Had
• Green:Too
• Blue:Deposit
• Purple:Screen

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: Consumed
• Green: Also
• Blue: Atm Options
• Purple: ___Play

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, 31st March:

• Yellow: Consumed (Ate, Had, Put Away, Took In)
• Green: Also (As Well, Besides, To Boot, Too)
• Blue: Atm Options (Balance, Deposit, Transfer, Withdrawal)
• Purple: ___Play (Fore, Horse, Screen, Word)

I wasn't off to the best start when I matched 'deposit' and 'put away', but after I added 'transfer' to that group, I quickly realised it was about an ATM rather than 'getting rid of something'. After solving blue, I looked for other matches with 'put away', and saw a similarity (although seemingly on opposing sides) with 'took in'. I didn't quite understand this yet, so I focused on 'too' and 'as well' first, which was such an obvious match I thought it must be the yellow theme instead of the green one.

With only yellow and purple left, it was far easier to complete the yellow group. Turns out my first instinct, 'getting rid of something', was correct after all. I didn't need to play with the 'play' theme anymore, but I'm sure all you veteran Connections players caught 'wordplay' right away.

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!