Spoiler warning: This guide covers the archived New York Times Connections puzzle for Thursday, February 20, 2025, game #620. Stop after the hint sections if you want to solve it yourself; the complete groups and answers appear lower down.
Hints for Connections #620
The 16-word grid is:
ROOSTER, UMBRELLA, SLEEP, STAR, SOS, SUNRISE, STAY, FLARE, CIRCLE, BUNK, SIGNAL, DEW, ALARM, TRIANGLE, WORM, CRASH
Yellow-group hint
Think of things designed to catch a person’s attention.
Green-group hint
These words can follow the idea of spending the night at a place.
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Blue-group hint
Look for words associated with a particular time of day.
Purple-group hint
This group contains shapes featured in a hit Netflix series.
Stronger one-word nudges
If the broad clues are not enough, these one-word prompts point toward each group:
- Yellow: ALARM
- Green: BUNK
- Blue: DEW
- Purple: CIRCLE
Answers for February 20, 2025
Spoilers begin here. The puzzle has four groups of four words.
Yellow: ALERT
ALARM, FLARE, SIGNAL, SOS
Each is an alert or distress signal intended to draw attention.
Green: SPEND THE NIGHT (AT)
BUNK, CRASH, SLEEP, STAY
These words can describe spending the night somewhere: bunk there, crash there, sleep there or stay there.
Blue: ASSOCIATED WITH EARLY MORNING
DEW, ROOSTER, SUNRISE, WORM
Morning dew, a rooster’s call, sunrise and the early bird’s worm all point to the start of the day.
Purple: COOKIE-CUTTER SHAPES IN Squid Game
CIRCLE, STAR, TRIANGLE, UMBRELLA
These are the shapes used for the dalgona (cookie-cutter) challenge in Netflix’s Squid Game.
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The trickiest overlap in the grid
ROOSTER can initially look like it belongs with ALARM, SIGNAL and FLARE because all four can suggest waking or alerting someone. The intended set places ROOSTER in the early-morning group, leaving SOS as the fourth alert item. Testing the most specific shared meaning before committing helps avoid that red herring.
How to approach this puzzle
- Scan for an unmistakable set. ALARM, FLARE and SIGNAL strongly suggest alerts; look for the fourth item that completes that meaning.
- Check phrase completions. BUNK, CRASH, SLEEP and STAY each work as ways to spend the night somewhere.
- Group time-of-day references. DEW, ROOSTER, SUNRISE and WORM share an early-morning association.
- Reserve the pop-culture category for the leftovers. CIRCLE, STAR, TRIANGLE and UMBRELLA match the Squid Game cookie shapes.
Connections presents 16 words that must be divided into four groups of four. The colors indicate the relative difficulty of the categories, with yellow generally the most direct and purple the most specialized. The game allows up to four incorrect guesses, according to the contemporary guide descriptions for this archived puzzle; interface and access details may change over time.
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