NYT Connections hint and answers, Sat 1st Feb

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Sunday 2nd March!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Saturday, 1st February? In this wordy NYT puzzle, you'll be looking for common themes. Some may be obvious while others will be very difficult to find. If today's Connections puzzle proves a bit too daunting, we can help you out.

In this Connections guide, you'll find several hints as well as some spoilers (don't worry, only if you choose to see them) to help reveal the solution. In case you're a Connections newbie, we'll explain the rules too. Let's start guessing!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Saturday 1st February
• What are today's Connections words?
• What are today's Connections groups?
• What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

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How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words "Hook", "Nana", "Peter", and "Wendy" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, "Action", "Ballpark", "Go", and "Stick" are all words which commonly come just before the word "Figure".

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

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Connections hint for Saturday 1st February

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Think of warm and cold colours.
• Green: Agatha Christie would be familiar with these words.
• Blue: Things you may do when you don't agree with something.
• Purple: You can use each of these words in the same short phrase.
• Extra hint 1: Only the yellow group doesn't have a word starting with 'D'.
• Extra hint 2: Think of "striking a balance"... Then look at the words again.

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

• Yellow: Tone
• Green: Clue
• Blue: Dispute
• Purple: Deal

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Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

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What are today's Connections groups?

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

• Yellow: Tint
• Green: Components Of A Mystery
• Blue: Take Issue With
• Purple: Strike A ___

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.

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Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

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What is today's Connections answer?

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Saturday, 1st February:

• Yellow: Tint (Hue, Shade, Tinge, Tone)
• Green: Components Of A Mystery (Alibi, Clue, Detective, Suspect)
• Blue: Take Issue With (Contest, Challenge, Dispute, Question)
• Purple: Strike A ___ (Chord, Deal, Match, Pose)

I was off to a good start today, thanks to the green 'mystery' group. The only word I wasn't immediately sure of was 'clue' since it's the only word in that group not referring to a person, but since nothing else seemed a better fit, I took the chance fairly quickly. I struggled with some mismatches between the blue and purple categories after that (no, 'challenge' and 'match' don't belong together), so I concentrated on the yellow category next.

It might help a bit if you're into drawing, painting, or photo-editing for this one, but I suspect the 'tint' group was fairly easy to find for most people. Perhaps the word 'tinge' is a bit less common than its peers in this category, but that's the only difficulty I can think of. Once I got both the yellow and green groups out of the way, I went back to the real challenge of today's Connections puzzle, the blue and purple groups.

The Connections difficulty levels often work out differently for me; while the purple group is usually the hardest one, I often find the green or even the blue group before yellow. Today, however, blue and purple were indeed the hardest, and I had to uncover the real topic of the blue group (which is about an argument rather than a game) before I was able to get purple. Quite the challenge!

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!