NYT Connections hints and answers for August 15, 2025

Welcome to our comprehensive guide for NYT Connections puzzle #796 from Thursday, August 15, 2025! Today's puzzle presented an interesting mix of categories that challenged players with everything from kitchen knowledge to wordplay. Whether you solved it perfectly or needed a few hints along the way, this detailed breakdown will help you understand the logic behind each category and improve your Connections strategy.

🎯 Quick Answer Summary

📖 Detailed Category Analysis

🟨 Yellow Category: POULTRY CUTS

The yellow category featured BREAST, TENDER, THIGH, and WING - all cuts of poultry, particularly chicken. This was the most straightforward category of the day, as these terms immediately evoke images of chicken pieces you'd find at any butcher shop or grocery store.

The beauty of this category lies in its universal recognition. Whether you're a cooking enthusiast or just someone who's ordered at KFC, these four words naturally group together. BREAST and THIGH are the main cuts, while WING is a popular appetizer choice, and TENDER refers to the tender strips of breast meat.

Strategy tip: Food-related categories often appear in the yellow slot because they rely on common knowledge rather than wordplay or abstract connections. When you see food terms, try grouping them by type (cuts of meat, types of pasta, kitchen utensils, etc.).

🟩 Green Category: HANDLE, AS A BILL

The green category required understanding idiomatic expressions related to paying bills: FOOT, PAY, SETTLE, and TAKE CARE OF. This category exemplifies how Connections often tests knowledge of phrases and expressions beyond literal word meanings.

FOOT the bill is perhaps the trickiest of these, as it's not immediately obvious why "foot" relates to payment. This expression comes from the practice of adding up a column of figures and writing the total at the "foot" (bottom) of the page. The person who "foots the bill" pays the total.

The other terms are more straightforward: you can PAY a bill directly, SETTLE an account, or TAKE CARE OF the charges. All four represent different ways to handle financial obligations.

Strategy tip: When you see words that could have multiple meanings, consider idiomatic expressions. "Foot" isn't just a body part - it's also part of "foot the bill." This kind of lateral thinking is crucial for Connections success.

🟦 Blue Category: SPLENDID

The blue category grouped synonyms for "splendid": BRILLIANT, CAPITAL, FINE, and GRAND. This category required recognizing that these words, despite having other meanings, all serve as adjectives meaning "excellent" or "wonderful."

BRILLIANT can mean intellectually gifted or literally bright, but here it means outstanding. CAPITAL typically refers to a city or money, but as an adjective, it means first-rate. FINE has numerous meanings (thin, penalty, okay), but in this context means excellent. GRAND can mean large or magnificent.

What made this category challenging was that each word has multiple common meanings. Players might have initially thought of "capital" as relating to cities or "fine" as relating to penalties, missing the connection through their shared meaning of "splendid."

Strategy tip: For synonym categories, try to think of alternative definitions for each word. Often, the connection lies in a secondary meaning that all four words share.

🟪 Purple Category: STARTS OF CULINARY NUTS

The purple category was the day's trickiest, featuring the beginnings of nut names: CASH, HAZE, MAC, and PEC. These represent the starts of CASHew, HAZElnut, MACadamia, and PECan respectively.

This category exemplifies the kind of wordplay that makes purple categories so challenging. You need to recognize that these aren't complete words standing alone, but rather prefixes that complete to form nut names. It's particularly tricky because words like CASH and MAC have strong standalone meanings that can lead you down wrong paths.

The "culinary nuts" specification is important too - these are nuts commonly used in cooking and baking, distinguishing them from botanical definitions of nuts. Cashews and macadamias are popular in Asian cuisine, hazelnuts are classic in European desserts, and pecans are essential in Southern American cooking.

Strategy tip: Purple categories often involve partial words or wordplay. If you're stuck with seemingly unrelated short words, consider whether they might be beginnings, endings, or parts of longer words or phrases.

🔍 Today's Challenging Elements

Red Herrings and Traps

Today's puzzle contained several potential red herrings that could mislead solvers:

• Body parts trap: With BREAST, THIGH, and WING, players might have looked for a fourth body part, potentially considering FOOT. However, FOOT belonged in the bill-paying category.
• Money-related confusion: CASH, PAY, and FINE could all relate to money, but they belonged to different categories. This kind of surface-level connection often trips up players.
• Multiple meaning maze: Words like CAPITAL, FINE, and GRAND have so many meanings that finding the right connection required careful consideration of context.

What Made This Puzzle Special

Puzzle #796 was particularly well-constructed because it balanced accessibility with challenge. The yellow category provided a confidence boost with its straightforward food theme, while the purple category demanded creative thinking about word formation.

The green and blue categories tested different skills - idiomatic knowledge versus synonym recognition. This variety ensures that different types of word puzzle enthusiasts can find something to appreciate, whether they excel at linguistic knowledge, wordplay, or pattern recognition.

💡 Expert Solving Strategies

Progressive Difficulty Approach

Start with the most obvious connections. Today, the poultry cuts category was clearly the easiest, providing a solid foundation. Once you've secured the yellow category, you have fewer words to work with, making subsequent categories easier to identify.

Process of Elimination

With 16 words, systematic elimination is crucial. After identifying BREAST, TENDER, THIGH, and WING as poultry cuts, you're left with 12 words to sort into three categories. This reduction makes pattern recognition much more manageable.

Multiple Meaning Analysis

For words with multiple meanings (like CAPITAL, FINE, FOOT), write down all the definitions you can think of. Often, the connection lies in a meaning that's not the first one that comes to mind. This systematic approach prevents tunnel vision.

Context Clue Recognition

Pay attention to word forms and lengths. The purple category's short words (CASH, HAZE, MAC, PEC) were a clue that they might be partial words. Similarly, if you see a mix of short and long words, they might form a category based on what they can be combined with.

🎓 Learning from Today's Puzzle

Vocabulary Building

Today's puzzle reinforced several important vocabulary lessons:

• Idiomatic expressions for payment (especially "foot the bill")
• Synonym recognition for words meaning "excellent"
• Knowledge of nut varieties and their culinary uses
• Understanding of poultry terminology

Pattern Recognition Skills

The puzzle also reinforced key pattern recognition skills that transfer to future puzzles:

• Identifying categories based on word fragments
• Recognizing thematic groupings in food terminology
• Understanding how idiomatic expressions can connect seemingly unrelated words
• Balancing literal and figurative meanings of words

📊 Player Performance Insights

Based on community discussions and solving patterns, most players found the yellow category quickly, with the poultry cuts being almost universally recognized as the starting point. The green category proved more challenging, particularly the "foot the bill" expression, which isn't as commonly used as "pay" or "settle."

The blue category created interesting division among solvers - those with strong vocabulary skills recognized the synonyms quickly, while others got distracted by the multiple meanings of each word. The purple category, predictably, was where most players used their final guesses, with many expressing "aha!" moments when they realized the nut connection.

🌟 Final Thoughts

August 15, 2025's Connections puzzle (#796) exemplified what makes this game so engaging: the perfect balance of accessible and challenging content. From the straightforward poultry cuts to the clever wordplay of the nut prefixes, each category tested different aspects of language knowledge and puzzle-solving skills.

Whether you solved this puzzle in minutes or needed multiple attempts, remember that each Connections game teaches valuable lessons about pattern recognition, vocabulary, and lateral thinking. The key is to approach each puzzle with curiosity and systematic thinking, building on what you've learned from previous games.

Tomorrow brings puzzle #797 with new challenges and opportunities to apply these skills. Keep practicing, stay curious about language and wordplay, and most importantly, enjoy the daily mental workout that Connections provides!