NYT Connections #1168 answer & hints: Saturday, August 22, 2026

Updated: Saturday, August 22, 2026 · Hints reviewed by Omer Liban · New puzzle daily at midnight US Eastern Time (5am UK). · Puzzle editor: Wyna Liu.

This page has every level of help for the NYT Connections puzzle #1168 of Saturday, August 22, 2026: 3 spoiler-free hint tiers that narrow things down step by step, followed by the complete answers with explanations — each behind its own tap-to-reveal card.

Stuck on today's Connections? Work through the hint tiers below — each one gives away a little more, so you can get exactly as much help as you want and still keep the win.

New to Connections? The four answer groups are colour-coded by difficulty: 🟡 yellow is the easiest, then 🟢 green, 🔵 blue, and 🟣 purple — the trickiest, usually built on wordplay. The hints below use those colours.

Connections hints (August 22, 2026)

1One word from each group

Yellow (easiest): one of its words is “CHISEL”.
Green (easy): one of its words is “BITTER”.
Blue (tricky): one of its words is “CONE”.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay): one of its words is “GILMORE”.

2Category hints (no answers)

Yellow (easiest): the theme is “Carpentry tools”.
Green (easy): the theme is “Kinds of melon”.
Blue (tricky): the theme is “Garden hose settings”.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay): the theme is “___ girls of pop culture”.

3One full group revealed

Yellow (easiest) — the connection is “Carpentry tools”, and its four words are: CHISEL, HAMMER, PLANE, SAW.

Connections answers — August 22, 2026 (#1168)

★Today's full Connections answers, explained

Yellow (easiest) — the connection is “Carpentry tools”. The words: CHISEL, HAMMER, PLANE, SAW.
Green (easy) — the connection is “Kinds of melon”. The words: BITTER, MUSK, WATER, WINTER.
Blue (tricky) — the connection is “Garden hose settings”. The words: CONE, JET, MIST, SHOWER.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay) — the connection is “___ girls of pop culture”. The words: GILMORE, GOLDEN, MEAN, SPICE.

The puzzle, explained

Today's puzzle had a really clever purple category that hinged on recognizing "___ Girls" as a pop culture pattern—Gilmore Girls, Golden Girls, Mean Girls, and Spice Girls all fit perfectly. The tricky part was that GOLDEN and MEAN could easily trick you into other groups since golden is a melon type (hello, bait!) and mean relates to a personality or math concept. SHOWER was the sneaky blue infiltrator that probably caught people off guard, since it shares "garden hose setting" logic with cone, jet, and mist but sounds like it belongs in the green melon category at first glance. If you got stuck between melon types and hose settings, WATER and SHOWER were likely fighting for your brain space. Once you locked in the purple category, though, the rest fell into place pretty cleanly!

Next in today's routine: Wordle → · every game's answers on one page. New puzzle daily at midnight US Eastern Time (5am UK). Bookmark this page for tomorrow's hints. Or play Connections on the official site.

More of today's puzzles

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Connections — common questions

What time does NYT Connections reset?

A new Connections puzzle is released daily at midnight US Eastern Time — that's 5am in the UK (4am during US daylight-saving transitions) and 12:00am for US East Coast players.

What do the Connections colours mean?

Yellow is the easiest group, then green, then blue, and purple is the trickiest — purple usually involves wordplay such as homophones, hidden words or 'words before/after X'.

How many mistakes are allowed in Connections?

You can make four mistakes before the puzzle ends. If you see 'one away…', exactly three of your four selected words belong together.

Previous Connections puzzles

Full Connections archive (137 puzzles) → · How to play Connections (and win more) →