Understanding Today’s Connections Puzzle
If you’re looking for clues for today’s Connections answers, the puzzle for July 20 (puzzle #770) is slightly easier than yesterday’s. The Connections Companion has rated this puzzle at a difficulty level of 2.5 out of 5, making it a good opportunity to keep your streak going. Every day, we update this guide with hints and tips to help you solve the puzzle and find all four answers. If the clues aren’t enough, we also provide the full list of answers below, including the category titles and corresponding words.
Additionally, we’ve included a reflection on yesterday’s puzzle, #769, in case you’re reading this from a different time zone.
Hints to Help You Solve Today’s Puzzle
Unlike our guide to today’s Wordle answer, where we recommend starting with the best Wordle start words, solving Connections requires identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category has a difficulty level represented by a color: yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you make four mistakes, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be very helpful.
Today’s Connections words are:
- Bop
- Draw
- Cross
- Buzz
- Dry
- Loan
- Pull
- Sway
- Bounce
- Twist
- Drag
- Shaken
- Pass
- Groove
- Gin
- Puff
If you need hints to solve the groupings, here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- Yellow: Move to the music
- Green: Inhalation
- Blue: Martini specifications
- Purple: ___ word
These hints should get you started on finding today’s Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Here’s a larger hint: Grab a drink or a bowl and find the words to this song.
Today’s Connections Answers
So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #770?
Drumroll, please…
Yellow – Move to the music:
Bop, Bounce, Groove, Sway
Green – Inhalation:
Drag, Draw, Puff, Pull
Blue – Martini specifications:
Dry, Gin, Shaken, Twist
Purple – ___ word:
Buzz, Cross, Loan, Pass
I went through the puzzle pretty quickly today, which is always a good feeling. I’m not too familiar with martinis (I prefer whiskey myself), but I’ve seen enough James Bond movies to recognize “Dry” and “Shaken” as related to the drink. A quick look around revealed “Gin,” and “Twist” was the only clue that felt like it could fit.
With blue out of the way, next came green with “Drag,” “Draw,” “Puff,” and “Pull.”
Then I finally got the easiest category, yellow, solved with synonyms for dancing to music: “Bop,” “Bounce,” “Groove,” and “Sway.”
That left only purple as today’s rote fill with “Buzz,” “Cross,” “Loan,” and “Pass.”
Yesterday’s Connections Answers
Yellow – Sources of drinking water:
Rain, Spring, Tap, Well
Green – Things you can do with a football:
Pass, Punt, Snap, Spike
Blue – Sharp fasteners:
Brad, Nail, Pin, Tack
Purple – Starts of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
Don, Leo, Mic, Rap
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #769, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I haven’t seen many three-level and above puzzles recently, but with all of the recent 2.5 to 2.8 level puzzles, I’ve noticed that these mid-tier groups tend to have more obvious traps that seem meant to trip you up if you aren’t paying attention.
Tips for Winning at Connections
There are two ways to play Connections: either get the answers as you solve them or focus on solving the hardest group, Purple, first.
For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked-off area.
For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.
If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together, it’s easier to find another set.
Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.
The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).
One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there, take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.
Often, these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted, and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it’s a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.
If you’re new to the game, you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.