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Connections hints for Monday, April 6
Try these clues in order; each one reveals a little more about the four groups without immediately listing every tile.
- One group is made up of occasions where people dance.
- Another group uses different meanings of a word associated with having a stake in something.
- Think of what you might find in the arcade game Whac-A-Mole.
- The last group hides four musical titles, each changed by replacing its final letter.
NYT Connections #1,030 answers
The board contains 16 tiles, sorted into four groups of four. The answers below are corroborated by TechRadar’s April 5 guide and Parade’s April 6 guide; the NYT Help Center explains the game, but does not provide a specific official answer page for this historical board.
| Color | Category | Tiles | Why they fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Events with dancing | BALL, HOEDOWN, HOP, RAVE | Each can describe a social event or gathering centered on dancing. |
| Green | Interest | CLAIM, CONCERN, SHARE, STAKE | Each can express an interest, involvement, or stake in an issue or venture. |
| Blue | Components of Whac-A-Mole | HOLES, MALLET, MOLE, TIMER | These are elements of the arcade game: targets pop up from holes, players hit them with a mallet, and play is timed. |
| Purple | Musicals with last letter changed | CAROUSER, EVITE, OLIVES, WICKET | Change the final letter of Carousel, Evita, Oliver!, and Wicked to get the four displayed tiles. |
How the purple wordplay works
The purple category is a letter-change pattern rather than a shared meaning. The tiles are near-miss spellings of musical titles: Carousel becomes CAROUSER, Evita becomes EVITE, Oliver! becomes OLIVES, and Wicked becomes WICKET. In each case, the title’s last letter is replaced to form the puzzle tile.
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Why the board can be tricky
The green group relies on “interest” in a broad sense. A claim, concern, share, or stake can each signal involvement or a form of interest, even though the words do not all look alike at first glance. The blue category is more concrete once Whac-A-Mole comes to mind, while the purple set depends on spotting altered titles rather than a literal topic label.
TechRadar writer Johnny Dee described this edition as hard and reported making one mistake. That is his personal solving experience, not an official difficulty rating or a measure of how all players performed.
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How NYT Connections works
In Connections, players receive 16 words and sort them into four groups of four based on a shared theme. Each group has a color: yellow is the easiest, while purple is the trickiest. The New York Times Help Center notes that the puzzle is designed to be challenging because words can seem to fit more than one category, and says editors curate words and categories using the Oxford Dictionary.
The game is free to play without registration and releases daily at midnight in the player’s timezone. It is available on the NYT Games website and in NYT apps. The Help Center says the full archive, dating back to June 12, 2023, is available to All Access and Games subscribers.
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