NYT Connections #1173 answer & hints: Thursday, August 27, 2026

Updated: Thursday, August 27, 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 #1173 of Thursday, August 27, 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 27, 2026)

1One word from each group

Yellow (easiest): one of its words is “ELECTRIC EEL”.
Green (easy): one of its words is “CHOKED UP”.
Blue (tricky): one of its words is “ASH”.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay): one of its words is “BROCK”.

2Category hints (no answers)

Yellow (easiest): the theme is “Electric things”.
Green (easy): the theme is “Moved to tears”.
Blue (tricky): the theme is “Shades of gray”.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay): the theme is “Music genre plus starting letter”.

3One full group revealed

Yellow (easiest) — the connection is “Electric things”, and its four words are: ELECTRIC EEL, LIGHTNING, LIVE WIRE, PIKACHU.

Connections answers — August 27, 2026 (#1173)

★Today's full Connections answers, explained

Yellow (easiest) — the connection is “Electric things”. The words: ELECTRIC EEL, LIGHTNING, LIVE WIRE, PIKACHU.
Green (easy) — the connection is “Moved to tears”. The words: CHOKED UP, EMOTIONAL, MISTY, OVERCOME.
Blue (tricky) — the connection is “Shades of gray”. The words: ASH, DOVE, PEWTER, SLATE.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay) — the connection is “Music genre plus starting letter”. The words: BROCK, NEMO, SPUNK, WRAP.

The puzzle, explained

The purple group was beautifully devious—each word is a music genre with a letter added to the front: B-ROCK, N-EMO, SP-UNK, and W-RAP. The trap was that BROCK and NEMO look like they belong together as Pokémon characters (with Pikachu tempting you further), while SPUNK and WRAP seemed like they could fit into almost anything else. What made this especially cruel is that ASH, DOVE, PEWTER, and SLATE all work as shades of gray, but DOVE and SLATE are also common first names that might've made you second-guess whether they belonged with the Pokémon group or the gray shades. The real killer was MISTY—totally plausible as a shade of gray, but it actually belongs in the "moved to tears" group, which probably had people agonizing over whether gray shades was the right category at all.

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

LinkedIn puzzles

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) →