Today's puzzle could be a tricky one, but if you have an appreciation for pop culture, you'll probably fare pretty well.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for April 27 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,051. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,051, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
Solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Radioactive Man
- Raging Bull
- Red Onion
- Regina King
- Reservoir Dogs
- Reverend Lovejoy
- Roman Holiday
- Roasted Chicken
- Roe Buck
- Rear Window
- Romaine Lettuce
- Rod Flanders
- Rain Man
- Rotary Clipper
- Ralph Wiggum
- Ranch Dressing
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Salad ingredients
- 🟩 Green: Classic Films
- 🟦 Blue: "The Simpsons" characters
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in NBA Players
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on April 27 for puzzle #1,051 are somewhat trickier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Salad Ingredients: Ranch dressing, red onion, roasted chicken, romaine lettuce
- 🟩 Classic Films: Rain Man, Rear Window, Reservoir Dogs, Roman Holiday
- 🟦 "The Simpsons" Characters: Radioactive Man, Ralph Wiggum, Reverend Lovejoy, Rod Flanders
- 🟪 Ending in NBA Players: Raging Bull, Regina King, Roe Buck, Rotary Clipper
I've watched enough of "The Simpsons" to pick out many of the supporting cast from any Connections grid, so the first group I nabbed was Radioactive Man, Ralph Wiggum, Reverend Lovejoy and Rod Flanders. Interestingly, the blue category has revolved around characters for two days in a row now.
I had a bit of a misfire with the four things that all had an animal in the phrase (which is not a category) next, though this did help me confirm that, yes, I had been right to think one of the connections for today was indeed things that go in a salad after all (roasted chicken, red onion, romaine lettuce and ranch dressing).
I had incorrectly assumed that the obvious movie titles were there to throw me off, so after a little trial and error, I got Classic Films (Rain Man, Rear Window, Reservoir Dogs and Roman Holiday), leaving Raging Bull, Roe Buck, Rotary Clipper and Regina King as the last category of the day: Ending in NBA Players.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Stipulation: Catch, caveat, fine print, strings
- 🟩 Vocal characteristics: Pitch, range, register, tone
- 🟦 Characters in "Dick and Jane": Dick, Jane, Mother, Spot
- 🟪 Things with faces: Building, cliff, clock, polyhedron
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,050, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
The first thing I caught today was pitch, tone and register all being to do with singing, and then I closed that group out with register.
I then spotted catch and caveat, and realized that meant there were other words to do with having some sort of condition involved, remembered the phrase "no strings attached," and clocked that the final word or phrase for the yellow group must be fine print, as in "make sure you read the fine print."
I can't say I'm a "Dick and Jane" expert, but I had a hunch that Dick, Jane, Mother, and Spot all went together as they were all proper nouns, and that just left the remaining four words to form the purple category, things with faces: building, cliff, clock, and polyhedron.
