Are you searching for the most up-to-date solutions to the NYT Connections puzzle? If so, you’re in the right place. Here, you’ll find not only the direct answers to today’s challenge, but also carefully constructed hints designed to guide you in the right direction without immediately revealing the solution. In addition, we provide assistance for several of The New York Times’ other popular daily word and logic games, including the Mini Crossword, the endlessly addictive Wordle, the specialized Connections: Sports Edition, and the brand-new puzzle offering called Strands.

Today’s edition of the Connections puzzle presents an especially engaging assortment of categories that will appeal to a wide range of players. Among these categories, the green group is particularly straightforward for anyone who has spent hours around a Monopoly board or gaming table, since the theme draws on familiar components of traditional board games. This makes it a nostalgic challenge for many, evoking memories of dice clattering, stacks of play money, and the inevitable negotiations over who gets Park Place. Keep reading, as we will provide both thematic clues to help you make your own inferences and the exact answers to compare against your progress.

The New York Times has also enhanced the Connections experience with an innovative tool: the Connections Bot. Much like the widely popular bot developed for Wordle, this feature provides players with analytical feedback once they have completed the puzzle. After finishing a round, you can visit the bot to obtain a numerical breakdown of your performance. It evaluates your guesses, offers an assessment of how efficiently you identified the groups, and even supplies you with a score. Registered users of the Times Games section can now dive even deeper into their personal statistics. You can track and analyze how many puzzles you have solved, your current win streak, how frequently you complete puzzles flawlessly with a ‘perfect’ score, and your overall success rate. This gamified progress tracking creates an additional layer of motivation for puzzle enthusiasts who enjoy measuring their improvement over time.

### Guidance: Hints for Today’s Puzzle
To help you navigate today’s puzzle without simply handing over the answers, we’ve arranged four carefully worded hints, one for each group within Connections. These are intentionally listed from the yellow group — which is designed to be the most approachable — moving toward the purple grouping, which traditionally demands sharper insight and creative lateral thinking.

– **Yellow group hint:** This cluster is centered around the idea of sharply criticizing or verbally attacking someone. In other words, imagine hearing phrases that suggest intense, often exaggerated negativity directed at others. Or as the clue indicates, “Quit negging me!”
– **Green group hint:** Think back to board games. Beyond the joy of competing with friends or family, these games rely on several consistent physical items to function. As the hint suggests, you may even need that colorful ‘play money’ too.
– **Blue group hint:** The theme here rests in linguistics. Specifically, these words appear identical in spelling but carry different meanings depending on pronunciation or context. Hence, they are “words with a twin.”
– **Purple group hint:** Perhaps the trickiest one of all, this category is formed around expressions that precede the word “sticks.” The partial clue given is “…and stones,” nudging you indirectly toward the complete theme.

### Solutions: Today’s NYT Connections Categories
Now, let’s reveal the groupings themselves so you can confirm whether your instincts were right:

– **Yellow group (Criticize harshly):** The words collected here are *bash, blast, flame,* and *roast*. Each term is a colorful synonym for strongly condemning someone verbally.
– **Green group (Board game components):** Unsurprisingly, these four items are *board, cards, dice,* and *pieces* — the universal building blocks of countless tabletop games across cultures.
– **Blue group (Heteronyms):** Words falling under this linguistic category are *axes, bass, coordinate,* and *does*. Each is a classic example of a term where pronunciation shifts alter meaning entirely.
– **Purple group (____ sticks):** The final, more difficult category is filled by *chop, drum, fiddle,* and *fish*. Each word can precede “sticks” to form a common phrase.

### Final Overview
Thus, the fully solved Connections puzzle for August 31, 2025 (Puzzle #812), encompasses these four distinctive yet interrelated themes. Whether you successfully solved it independently, relied partially on hints, or sought the confirmation of the final answers, today’s puzzle offered a stimulating showcase of wordplay and categorization challenge.

If you enjoyed today’s puzzle and are eager to refine your skills, don’t miss our additional guide: “Hints, Tips, and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time.” It provides a deeper dive into the logic behind Connections, ensuring that you not only solve the puzzles but also steadily sharpen your deductive reasoning and word association abilities.

Sourse: https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/todays-nyt-connections-hints-answers-and-help-for-aug-31-812/#ftag=CAD590a51e