NYT Connections Hint Today — Answers & Clues (#986)

Published: February 21, 2026 | Updated Daily | By: Jordan Malik, Puzzle Writer & Daily NYT Games Player

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⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: This page contains hints and full answers for today’s NYT Connections puzzle #986. Scroll slowly — hints come first, answers are clearly marked below.

If you’ve landed here, you’re probably one of the millions of people who opened today’s Connections grid, stared at 16 words, and thought “I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at.” That’s completely normal. Today’s puzzle #986 (Saturday, February 21, 2026) is one of those that rewards patience — and punishes anyone who rushes straight for the purple group.

This guide gives you today’s hints and answers first, then walks through the strategy and reasoning behind them. Whether you just need a nudge or want to understand why each group works the way it does, it’s all here. You can also bookmark our dedicated Connections Hint daily tool for quick-access hints every morning.

Today’s 16 Words (February 21, 2026 — #986)

Here are all the words in today’s Connections grid:

LATE · GREAT · PAST · LIFE · PRESENT · MINION · INFINITIVE · PERFECT · SOLID · DODGERS · EXCUSED · BACKGROUND · ABSENT · AUDITS · HISTORY · PHEW

Take a minute to look them over before reading the hints below.

Hints for Today’s Connections — No Spoilers Yet

These hints reveal the theme of each category without giving away the actual words. Start here if you want to keep solving yourself.

🟨 Yellow (Easiest): Think about what you’d write at the top of a résumé or CV — specifically the section that summarizes where you’ve been and what you’ve done.

🟩 Green: These words all describe whether someone showed up — or didn’t. You’d see them on a school register, an office attendance sheet, or a meeting RSVP.

🟦 Blue: After you finish a Connections puzzle, the game gives you a reaction. These four words are exactly the kind of reactions — or commentary — you might see (or say to yourself) at that moment.

🟪 Purple (Hardest): Each of these words secretly hides a car manufacturer inside it. You won’t find the brand names immediately obvious — that’s the whole point. Look carefully at the letters at the start of each word.

One More Hint Per Group (If You’re Still Stuck)

Yellow nudge: BACKGROUND and HISTORY belong together. What concept connects them to two more words in the grid?

Green nudge: ABSENT and EXCUSED are in the same group. What do schools call these kinds of statuses?

Blue nudge: PHEW and SOLID are in the same group. Neither of these relates to grammar or baseball — they’re reactions.

Purple nudge: Try writing out AUDITS, DODGERS, INFINITIVE, and MINION. Now look only at the first few letters of each word. Does any car brand jump out?

⚠️ Full Answers Below — Last Chance to Stop Scrolling

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NYT Connections Answers for February 21, 2026 (#986)

Here are all four complete category answers:

🟨 Yellow — EXPERIENCE

BACKGROUND · HISTORY · LIFE · PAST

These four words all describe a person’s accumulated experience — the kind of thing you summarize on a résumé. “What’s your background?” and “Do you have a history of…” are phrases most people recognize from job interviews or professional contexts. The tricky part is that LIFE and PAST both feel vague, which is intentional.

🟩 Green — ATTENDANCE STATUS

ABSENT · EXCUSED · LATE · PRESENT

Clean and satisfying once you see it. These are the four statuses a teacher or HR system would mark next to your name. LATE was the sneaky one — it could easily feel like it belongs with the Yellow group (as in “past” or “former”), which is exactly the kind of misdirection puzzle editor Wyna Liu is known for.

🟦 Blue — COMMENTARY ABOUT YOUR CONNECTIONS RESULTS

GREAT · PERFECT · PHEW · SOLID

This is a wonderfully self-referential category. After finishing a Connections game, these are words players use to describe how it went. PHEW is the standout — it’s not a superlative, it’s a sigh of relief. Grouping emotional reactions rather than categories of objects is a hallmark of Blue difficulty.

🟪 Purple — CAR BRANDS PLUS TWO LETTERS

AUDITS · DODGERS · INFINITIVE · MINION

The trickiest category of the day, and a great example of Connections’ hidden-word mechanic. Here’s how each word hides a car brand:

• AUDITS → AUDI + TS
• DODGERS → DODGE + RS
• INFINITIVE → INFINITI + VE
• MINION → MINI + ON

If DODGERS made you think baseball and INFINITIVE made you think grammar — you were being played. That’s intentional.

Why Today’s Puzzle Was Tricky (And What You Can Learn From It)

Puzzle #986 is a textbook example of how Connections uses surface-level meaning to lead solvers astray. Here’s what actually happened in today’s grid:

LATE looks like it could be “experience” (as in the late Mr. Johnson), attendance status, or even something else entirely. It belongs to attendance. PRESENT has the same problem — it reads like a gift, a verb, or a point in time. Again, attendance. DODGERS screams baseball. INFINITIVE screams grammar class. Neither is remotely relevant today.

This is called a red herring in puzzle language, and Wyna Liu uses them deliberately. The lesson for future puzzles: when a word seems to belong somewhere obvious, that’s often exactly where it doesn’t go.

How NYT Connections Works (Quick Explainer for New Players)

NYT Connections is a daily word puzzle from the New York Times, created and edited by puzzle editor Wyna Liu. It launched in beta in June 2023 and has since become one of the most-played NYT Games titles, second only to Wordle. If you enjoy daily puzzle challenges, there are plenty of other free online games worth exploring that exercise the same pattern-recognition muscles.

Each day, players see a 4×4 grid of 16 words. The goal is to sort them into four groups of four, where every word in a group shares a specific theme or connection. The four groups are color-coded by difficulty:

• 🟨 Yellow — Straightforward, usually literal connections
• 🟩 Green — A bit trickier, may require some knowledge
• 🟦 Blue — Requires lateral thinking or cultural familiarity
• 🟪 Purple — Wordplay, hidden words, or obscure references

Players get four incorrect guesses before the puzzle ends. There’s no timer, but there’s no restarting either.

The puzzle resets at midnight in your local time zone, so “today’s” puzzle might technically be yesterday’s depending on where you are.

A Proven Strategy for Solving Connections Every Day

After playing every puzzle since the game launched, here’s what actually works — not generic advice, but the real approach top solvers use.

Start With What You’re Certain About

Don’t start with the hardest group. Start with the one where you can name four words confidently. For most puzzles, that’s Yellow. Getting one group right narrows the field from 16 to 12 and immediately reveals structure.

Look for Words That Don’t Fit Anywhere Obvious

In today’s puzzle, PHEW stood out because it didn’t fit EXPERIENCE, ATTENDANCE, or any grammar/baseball category. When a word feels orphaned from the obvious groups, it’s often the key to unlocking the harder ones.

Treat Every Word As Potentially Deceptive

Wyna Liu has said in interviews that the most satisfying Connections categories are the ones where solvers feel tricked at first and delighted at the end. That’s a design philosophy, not an accident. Words like PRESENT, LATE, and DODGERS are placed there to distract. Assuming that the obvious interpretation is wrong is a reasonable default for Blue and Purple groups.

Use the Shuffle Button

The physical arrangement of words can cause grouping bias — your eye clusters nearby words together even when they don’t belong. Shuffling the grid forces fresh perception and often reveals connections that were invisible before.

Save Your Guesses

With only four allowed mistakes, patience matters more than speed. If you’re between two possible groupings, wait. It’s better to narrow down through confirmed groups than to risk a mistake on a 50/50 guess.

Common Traps Connections Players Fall Into

Over hundreds of puzzles, a few patterns come up repeatedly as sources of wrong answers.

The “obvious category” trap. When four words seem to all belong to an obvious group — say, four words that could all follow “time” — that group usually needs one substitution. Puzzle designers know solvers will jump at obvious sets, so they deliberately include near-misses.

Overthinking Purple too early. Purple groups require more lateral thinking than any other category, which means they’re almost impossible to solve before the other three are identified. Trying to crack Purple first is the most reliable way to waste guesses.

Ignoring grammar and structure. Some of the most surprising categories are structural: words that can all precede or follow a single word, words that all contain a hidden word, or words that are all types of something abstract. Today’s Purple group (car brands hidden inside words) is a perfect example.

Tips for Maintaining a Connections Streak

If streak-building is the goal, consistency matters more than brilliance. Here’s what helps:

Play early in the day. Puzzle fatigue is real. Most solvers report sharper pattern recognition in the morning, and playing when you’re fresh reduces unnecessary mistakes.

Review puzzles you got wrong. When a category surprises you, spend 30 seconds understanding why the connection works. This builds intuition for future puzzles faster than just moving on.

Follow the community. The NYT Connections community on Reddit (r/NYTConnections) shares daily reactions, alternative interpretations, and explanations of tricky categories. Reading through a few posts after each puzzle is a low-effort way to learn faster.

Don’t treat hints as failure. Using a hint to understand a Purple category isn’t cheating. Understanding the mechanic (hidden car brands, compound words, shared prefixes) makes you better at identifying it next time, hint-free. For a deeper look at solving strategies and past puzzle breakdowns, the Connections Hint Today guide covers patterns that appear repeatedly across multiple puzzles.

Recent Connections Puzzle Archive

Date	Puzzle #	Yellow	Green	Blue	Purple
Feb 21, 2026	#986	Experience	Attendance Status	Commentary About Your Connections Results	Car Brands + Two Letters
Feb 20, 2026	#985	—	—	—	—
Feb 19, 2026	#984	—	—	—	—

This archive is updated daily. Bookmark this page and come back each morning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I play NYT Connections?

The game is free to play at nytimes.com/games/connections. It’s also available in the NYT Games app on iOS and Android.

How many guesses do I get in Connections?

Four incorrect guesses. After the fourth mistake, the puzzle ends and all answers are revealed.

Does the NYT Connections difficulty change on weekends?

Not officially — each puzzle is rated internally by the constructor. In practice, Saturday puzzles tend to include more wordplay and abstract categories, which many players find harder.

What is the purple category usually about?

Purple is reserved for the most lateral or abstract connection in each puzzle. Common Purple mechanics include: hidden words inside words (like today), words that can all follow or precede a specific word, cultural references, and double meanings. Purple categories almost never have a literal, surface-level connection.

Can I replay old Connections puzzles?

Yes. The NYT provides a Connections archive through their games subscription. Several third-party sites also maintain archives of past puzzles and answers. If you enjoy decoding visual and social puzzles beyond word games, the Snapchat Planets guide is another popular puzzle-style feature that trips people up in similar ways.

Who creates the NYT Connections puzzle?

Wyna Liu, a puzzle editor at The New York Times, creates and edits Connections daily. She has spoken about the design philosophy in several interviews, emphasizing the importance of satisfying “aha” moments over pure difficulty.

About the Author

Jordan Malik has been writing about word games and puzzles since 2021, covering Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, and the broader NYT Games ecosystem. Jordan plays every daily Connections puzzle on the morning it drops and has maintained a 400+ day streak. This guide is updated every day based on firsthand solving experience — not automated tools or data scraping. When Jordan isn’t writing about puzzle strategy, the focus is on linguistics, etymology, and the design philosophy behind mass-market word games.

Questions, corrections, or thoughts on today’s puzzle? Reach out via the contact page.

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