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Spoilers for NYT Connections #728: The Sunday, June 8, 2025 puzzle groups its words into PERSIST, ANIMAL METAPHORS IN ECONOMICS, SIDEBAR INFO ON A PERSON’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE, and HOMOPHONES OF SLANG FOR MONEY.
Hints for Connections #728
Use these from least revealing to most revealing. The yellow clue is the most direct; the purple clue depends on sound-alike wordplay.
Yellow hint
Think of words meaning keep going, endure, remain, or continue: PERSIST.
Green hint
These are animal words used as shorthand for market outlooks or economic behavior.
#1 Best Overall
Blue hint
Look for fields commonly listed in the biographical sidebar of a person’s Wikipedia page.
Purple hint
Say the words aloud. They sound like informal terms for money.
The 16-word grid
The puzzle’s words are:
LAST · BULL · BORN · BRED · DOE · STAND · SPOUSE · BEAR · EDUCATION · CACHE · DOVE · HOLD · LUTE · STAY · OCCUPATION · HAWK
Answers and category logic
| Category | Words | Why they fit |
|---|---|---|
| PERSIST (yellow) | HOLD, LAST, STAND, STAY | Each can express continuing, enduring, remaining, or keeping at something. |
| ANIMAL METAPHORS IN ECONOMICS (green) | BEAR, BULL, DOVE, HAWK | These animals are familiar metaphors for market conditions, outlooks, or economic behavior. |
| SIDEBAR INFO ON A PERSON’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE (blue) | BORN, EDUCATION, OCCUPATION, SPOUSE | They are standard biographical fields that can appear in an encyclopedia-style infobox. |
| HOMOPHONES OF SLANG FOR MONEY (purple) | BRED, CACHE, DOE, LUTE | They sound like bread, cash, dough, and loot, respectively, although the spellings differ. |
Why the groups get harder
Yellow: direct meaning
HOLD, LAST, STAND, and STAY all point toward persistence, but their everyday uses can make them look unrelated until you test the shared idea of continuing or remaining.
Green: domain knowledge
BEAR and BULL are especially recognizable market terms. DOVE and HAWK require recognizing the broader economic and political vocabulary in which animals describe outlooks or behavior.
Blue: interface familiarity
BORN, EDUCATION, OCCUPATION, and SPOUSE become clear when you picture a Wikipedia biography’s sidebar rather than treating each word as an ordinary noun.
Purple: sound rather than spelling
The final set is the trap. BRED, CACHE, DOE, and LUTE do not look like money slang on the page; their spoken forms point to bread, cash, dough, and loot.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How NYT Connections works
Connections presents 16 words and asks you to find four groups of four linked by a theme. Yellow is intended to be the easiest category and purple the trickiest, and each puzzle has one solution. You can submit a group after selecting four words; incorrect guesses consume one of your limited mistakes.
Best Value
The daily puzzle releases at midnight in the player’s local timezone. NYT offers Connections through the Games app, NYTimes.com/games/connections, NYTimes.com/theathletic, and the News app. Eligible subscribers can access the archive, which reaches back to June 12, 2023.
Quick Recap
Quick answer key
- Yellow: HOLD, LAST, STAND, STAY — PERSIST
- Green: BEAR, BULL, DOVE, HAWK — ANIMAL METAPHORS IN ECONOMICS
- Blue: BORN, EDUCATION, OCCUPATION, SPOUSE — SIDEBAR INFO ON A PERSON’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE
- Purple: BRED, CACHE, DOE, LUTE — HOMOPHONES OF SLANG FOR MONEY
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