

Backup roles, keyboard shortcuts, pasta varieties, and suffix-based wordplay shape today’s NYT Connections, making overlaps the real challenge.
January 25’s NYT Connections blends everyday tech terms with food-related clues and linguistic endings, offering clever misdirection throughout the grid.
From stepping in as a substitute to pasta shapes and word-forming suffixes, today’s Connections puzzle balances logic, language, and lateral thinking.
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is live with a new grid and four new categories to guess. The most attractive part of the puzzle is its selection of words. At one glance, all these phrases look completely unrelated, randomly placed, but four of these words must have a connection to form a category.
While the Yellow one is still easy to guess, the other three will give a hard time to most players. The twist? Sometimes one word shares a connection to more than one group. Like every other day, the January 25 grid has brought clever pairings and a satisfying logic that long-time players will appreciate. It’s a moderate puzzle overall.
NYT Connections is among the daily puzzles that The New York Times provides, and it is the most popular among readers. In this game, there are 16 words (or phrases) that have to be put into four groups of four. Every group has a connection - either a theme, a phrase, or a category.
The groups are marked with colors according to their difficulty level:
Yellow is typically the most direct.
Green calls for a little more logical thinking.
Blue is more oriented to cultural or linguistic knowledge.
Purple is more likely to contain complex wordplay or references to popular culture.
Every round gives three wrong guesses before the end of the game; every selection becomes crucial.
Let’s first check out the words the NYT Connections January 25 has presented to players:
TEMP, ALT, ENTER, RIBBON, SHELL, TUBE, HOOD, SHIP, COVER, MENU, WINDOWS, BOWTIE, FILL IN, SUB, ATE, DOM
Yellow Group: These terms are associated with terms that mean backing someone up.
Green Group: These terms are associated with PC keyboard keys
Blue Group: These terms are associated with pasta shapes.
Purple Group: These terms are used as a suffix.
Also Read: Today's Wordle Hints and Answer for January 24, 2026 (Wordle #1680)
The above-mentioned clues must have directed you to the right track. However, those who are still struggling below are the solutions to NYT Connections January 25:
Yellow Group (ACT AS A BACKUP): COVER, FILL IN, SUB, TEMP
Green Group (PC KEYBOARD KEYS): ALT, ENTER, MENU, WINDOWS
Blue Group (PASTA SHAPES): BOWTIE, RIBBON, SHELL, TUBE
Purple Group (SUFFIXES): ATE, DOM, HOOD, SHIP
NYT Connections are tricky, but every time it’s equally exciting. Despite today’s puzzle being rated 2.3 out of 5, some players may struggle to find the categories. That’s the most attractive part of this puzzle. The game appeals to those who love challenges. Unlike others, Connections offers four different themes every day, making it both complicated and exciting, and these themes never get repeated.