If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Saturday, January 13, 2024, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Along the way, I’ll explain the meanings of the trickier words and we’ll learn how everything fits together. Beware, there are spoilers below for January 13, NYT Connections #216! Read on if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Connections game. 

If you want an easy way to come back to our Connections hints every day, bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there as well, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle.

Below, I’ll give you some oblique hints at today’s Connections answers. And farther down the page, I’ll reveal the themes and the answers. Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Credit: Connections/NYT

Does today’s Connections game require any special knowledge?

As you may have guessed, there are a lot of football-themed words. If you know football pretty well, you might be able to tell what four of those words have in common, and which are the red herrings. The rest of us might want to leave this group for last.

Hints for the themes in today’s Connections puzzle

Here are some spoiler-free hints for the groupings in today’s Connections:

• Yellow category – Ways of getting in.

• Green category – Be the boss.

• Blue category – People on the gridiron.

• Purple category – Delay tactics.

Does today’s Connections game involve any wordplay?

Nothing too tricky, just a lot of ambiguous words. Remember to ask yourself whether a verb might also be able to serve as a noun, and vice versa.

Ready to hear the answers? Keep scrolling if you want a little more help.

BEWARE: Spoilers follow for today’s Connections puzzle!

We’re about to give away some of the answers. Scroll slowly if you don’t want the whole thing spoiled. (The full solution is a bit further down.)

What are the ambiguous words in today’s Connections?

• Today’s puzzle is full of football words, so the trick is figuring out which ones can mean something else. I’ll give you one freebie: A tight END is a position in football.

• To PUNT is a way to relinquish possession of a football, or you can metaphorically PUNT a decision to the next meeting. 

• You can PASS a football, too, but you can also have a boarding PASS to get on an airplane, or a guest PASS to go with your friend to the pool where they are a member.

• You can RUN down a football field, RUN for office, or RUN a business. 

What are the categories in today’s Connections?

• Yellow: CREDENTIALS FOR ENTRY

• Green: PRESIDE OVER

• Blue: AMERICAN FOOTBALL POSITIONS

• Purple: POSTPONE

DOUBLE BEWARE: THE SOLUTION IS BELOW

Ready to learn the answers to today’s Connections puzzle? I give them all away below.

What are the yellow words in today’s Connections?

The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward. The theme for today’s yellow group is CREDENTIALS FOR ENTRY and the words are: BADGE, INVITE, PASS, TICKET.

What are the green words in today’s Connections?

The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest. The theme for today’s green category is PRESIDE OVER and the words are: CHAIR, DIRECT, LEAD, RUN.

What are the blue words in today’s Connections?

The blue grouping is the second-hardest. The theme for today’s blue category is AMERICAN FOOTBALL POSITIONS and the words are: CENTER, END, SAFETY, TACKLE.

What are the purple words in today’s Connections?

The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest. The theme for today’s purple category is POSTPONE and the words are: HOLD, PUNT, STALL, TABLE.

How I solved today’s Connections

Matching PASS with BADGE got me the first grouping, 🟨 and then I took an early stab at the football words by selecting the ones that can be positions, not actions. 🟦

RUN with CHAIR (as in CHAIRing a committee) got me the next grouping, 🟩 and finally I was left with a group of ways to STALL on making a decision. 🟪

Connections 
Puzzle #216
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

How to play Connections

I have a full guide to playing Connections, but here’s a refresher on the rules:

First, find the Connections game either on the New York Times website or in their Crossword app. You’ll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase. Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common. Often they are all the same type of thing (for example: RAIN, SLEET, HAIL, and SNOW are all types of wet weather) but sometimes there is wordplay involved (for example, BUCKET, GUEST, TOP TEN, and WISH are all types of lists: bucket list, guest list, and so on).

Select four items and hit the Submit button. If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed. (Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.) If your guess was incorrect, you’ll get a chance to try again.

You win when you’ve correctly identified all four groups. But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.

How to win Connections

The most important thing to know to win Connections is that the groupings are designed to be tricky. Expect to see overlapping groups. For example, one puzzle seemed to include six breakfast foods: BACON, EGG, PANCAKE, OMELET, WAFFLE, and CEREAL. But BACON turned out to be part of a group of painters along with CLOSE, MUNCH, and WHISTLER, and EGG was in a group of things that come by the dozen (along with JUROR, ROSE, and MONTH). So don’t hit “submit” until you’ve confirmed that your group of four contains only those four things.

If you’re stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to have no connection to the others. If all that comes to mind when you see WHISTLER is the painting nicknamed “Whistler’s Mother,” you might be on to something. When I solved that one, I ended up googling whether there was a painter named Close, because Close didn’t fit any of the obvious themes, either.

Another way to win when you’re stuck is, obviously, to read a few helpful hints–which is why we share these pointers every day. Check back tomorrow for the next puzzle!

I recently spent an unglamorous stay-cation moping around my Brooklyn apartment, fighting a viral infection. It’s winter. Colds happen. But dammit, being sick sucks. Few things give me comfort amid a bout of sickness—blankets are either too hot or not warm enough, tea parches my throat, and sleep is hard to come by. Thankfully, I can always depend on the healing presence of my cats, and my mom’s Thai jok.

Since I’m not willing to lend you my cats, let me tell you how I batch prepare a week’s worth of my mom’s soothing rice porridge to eat until I feel better. It’s a nourishing, warm hug of a soup, perfect for when you’re feeling your worst.

What is jok (โจ๊ก)?

Thai jok (pronounced a bit like “joe-g”) is a comforting rice porridge similar to dishes from other Asian countries (thing Chinese congee, or lugaw from the Philippines). In Thailand, you can find it served at restaurants that specialize in just this particular dish. Jok is primarily eaten for breakfast, but I like to have it for lunch too, especially when I’m sick and my sleep schedule is suffering. 

The soup base is made from broken jasmine rice and chicken broth. You can buy bags of broken rice at some asian grocery stores for this purpose, but I just break up regular rice on my own. Breaking it is key. You’ve probably added grain-intact rice to soup before; this rice swells and sits at the bottom of the bowl. The rice in jok acts differently.

When you break the grains of rice, the inside is exposed to the broth. As the water boils, the starches swell and burst. As the structure of the grain is already destroyed, more of the available gelatinized starch releases into the broth, making the soup silky and glutinous. 

Once you have the base porridge prepared, poach an egg in the hot liquid, add shredded meats, shrimp, or meatballs and top with fresh herbs and aromatics—cilantro, fresh chopped ginger, fried garlic, and chopped scallions. You can combine any or all of these additions, but when I’m feeling down in the dumps myself, a combo of chicken broth, egg, cilantro, and ginger are indispensable in my bowl.

How to make jok the easy way

Cooking from scratch is the last thing you want to do when you’re sick, and while making this soup isn’t as easy as cracking a can of Progresso, it’s light years more satisfying. To make it a tad easier than the classic preparation, I like to meal prep the components to make a soup that will last me a week—I just have to heat it up and drop in a couple eggs when I’m hungry. This makes the process much more manageable, and it still tastes just as good as when my mom makes it. 

1. Cook the rice

Cook a large quantity of rice, or just use leftover rice that you already have. I usually dump one and a half cups each of jasmine rice and water into my rice cooker and press “cook,” but if you like to make rice in a pot, do your thing. Once the rice is cooked and cooled, put it in a container with a lid and store it in the fridge. 

2. Chop the vegetables

Whenever I make a bowl of jok I just take a pinch of each. They’ll keep well for about a week.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Peel the ginger and finely chop or julienne an inch or two of the root. Store this in a small container with a lid. Make sure the pieces aren’t packed too tightly or they’ll freeze into a brick. Chop three or four scallions into thin rounds and store them in a small container with a damp paper towel. Do the same with a handful of cilantro. You can store them separately in their own containers or do a roommate situation like I did in the picture. Put the ginger in the freezer and the other two in the fridge. 

3. Make the jok

When you’re ready for soup, you can break the rice with an immersion blender, a food processor, or a standard blender. I use an immersion blender, so I pour two cups of chicken broth into a medium sized pot and add about a cup of the cooked, leftover rice. (Once you can get the hang of it, you can adjust the thickness of the soup by adjusting the amount of rice.) Break apart the lump of rice with a spoon. Use an immersion blender and pulse the mixture in the pot, targeting different areas, about 10 to 15 times. If you’re using a blender or food processor, add the broth and rice to the blender and pulse 10 to 15 times. You want to break the rice into small parts, but you don’t want to purée it into nothingness. Add the mixture to a pot. 

This rice has been pulsed 10 times. It’s almost there but there are a lot of whole grains still. I pulsed it another five times after taking this picture.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Turn the burner on to medium-low and allow the porridge to heat up, stirring occasionally as it heats and thickens. Let it boil for two or three minutes. It will continue to thicken as it cools.

4. Add your toppings

If you’re adding eggs, and I highly recommend you do, crack and drop them straight into the gently boiling jok. Turn off the heat and cover it with a lid. Let the eggs poach for about 15 minutes, which will leave you with a runny yolk that will cool the porridge down to the perfect temperature to soothe a sore throat. If you like your eggs cooked further, you can always snap the heat back on for a few minutes.

Scoop the soup into a bowl, carefully spooning the poached eggs on top. Add a pinch each of frozen ginger (it’ll thaw once you stir it in), scallions, and cilantro. 

This recipe makes enough jok for two servings and includes toppings that deliver a mild flavor, with soothing qualities for the tummy and throat. You can eat it any time of year, of course, and switch up the toppings with your mood. Try adding fried garlic chips, chili crisp, cooked leftover slices of beef or chicken, and a dab of soy sauce and fish sauce if you’d like a boost of saltiness and umami. Keep the batch-prepared components in the fridge and freezer so they’re ready for you when you need a pick-me-up during the week.

Quick Jok Recipe 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of leftover cooked jasmine rice

• 2 cups of chicken broth

• 2 eggs

• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh or frozen ginger

• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh cilantro

• 2 teaspoons sliced scallions

• Salt and pepper if desired

1. Add the rice and chicken broth to a medium sized pot. Break up the rice into smaller clusters with a spoon. Use an immersion blender to pulse the mixture about 10 times. The goal is to break up the rice, but not to obliterate it. Use a spoon to scoop some of the rice up so you can check on how it’s going. The rice pieces should be small but distinguishable. A few intact rice grains are fine.

2. Heat the mixture on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Let the soup boil for a minute or two. The mixture will thicken up toward the end of the cooking time and continue to thicken as it cools. 

3. Just before turning off the heat, crack the eggs and drop them directly into the jok. Cover the pot with a lid and turn off the heat. Let the eggs poach for about 15 minutes. Scoop the porridge into two bowls with one egg each and distribute the ginger, cilantro, and scallions. Add salt and pepper as desired.

Even a “good” breakup is emotionally taxing. If the person you’ve cut ties with turns out to be malicious, it’s a whole different story. Not only do you have to deal with the emotional toll of separation, but you also have to figure out how to protect yourself from possible harassment. Putting physical distance between you and your ex is the first step, but it’s also important to consider your digital privacy. If you’ve been sharing accounts for streaming services, know each other’s phone passcodes, or share access to financial accounts, then it’s time to do a step-by-step review and lock down your accounts to stop unauthorized access by your ex.

The people at Refuge Tech Safety, an organization that helps women and children facing economic and technological abuse, have produced an excellent Digital Breakup guide to help you through the process. While the whole thing is worth reading and following, these eight steps will get you started.

Secure your most important accounts

Start by changing the passwords of your crucial accounts. This may include:

• Your bank account

• Other finance accounts, such as PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Zelle, etc.

• Your investment accounts (including mutual funds, cryptocurrency, retirement funds, emergency accounts, etc.)

• Passcodes to your phone, laptop, tablets, and any other personal tech devices

Start using a password manager

Credit: Pranay Parab

I always recommend switching to a good password manager to safely store sensitive data, including passwords, account details, ID cards, etc., and this is as good a time as any. My recommendations include 1Password and Bitwarden (for most people), and KeePass (for more tech savvy people). You should also do a checkup on your most critical accounts, like your Google account. Consider the following steps:

• Do a Google account security checkup

• Change your Apple ID password and set up two-factor authentication

• If you have an iPhone with iOS 16 or newer, go through the Safety Check steps. Head over to Settings > Privacy & Security > Safety Check.

You should also set up two-factor authentication on all of your accounts. This can be done easily if you set up an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or even your password manager. (Most password managers also store your two-factor authentication keys.)

If you already use a password manager, change your master password

Now is a good time to change your master password for your password manager, even if you don’t think your ex-partner ever knew it. If warranted, you can even consider moving to a different password manager. 

Hide your location

We live in a hyper-connected world, and every device tracks your location to some degree. If you wish to hide your location from your ex-partner, start by disabling location tracking at the cloud service level. Start by going to Google Location History settings and select Turn off. You can also click the Manage history button and delete location history data. 

If you are in the Apple ecosystem, turn off location access for your ex via Apple’s Find My app, or any other location tracking apps, such as Life360. You may even consider turning off location services on your phone entirely until you feel it’s safe.

Lock down your email

If you have email accounts other than Google or iCloud, change your passwords for those too. Consider blocking your ex-partner from contacting you via email. Most email services have a block sender feature that is useful for these situations. You should also ensure your account recovery phone number and email addresses are yours, and not those of your ex.

Protect your social media, streaming, gaming, and fitness accounts

While it may be tempting to just delete any potentially triggering social media app after a breakup, it’s better to secure your account beforehand.

Even if you aren’t deleted, make sure your accounts are covered by your password manager and two-factor authentication. Make sure your account recovery details are your own, turn your account private, remove followers or friends linked to your ex, and block any accounts you don’t recognize that may actually belong to your ex (some services, like Instagram, will allow you to block multiple associated accounts at once).

Many social media and streaming apps allow you to check if there are any other devices you’ve logged in from. and log out remotely. Do so. If you’ve been sharing a streaming site account with your ex, it’s best to log out. Change the password or open a fresh account for yourself.

The same advice also applies to your fitness accounts, including Strava and others that may make your data available for others to see. Think before posting any of your workout details online and ensure this data can’t be seen by your ex. If you and your ex shared a gaming device, you should consider a factory reset and a fresh login.

Separate your shopping and meal delivery accounts

Shared ecommerce sites and delivery apps could reveal your current address to your ex if you forget they have access. Reset your passwords in all of them, log out of unused devices, and consider creating new accounts to avoid the chance of being tracked. 

Hide your travel details

If you frequently use apps to take cabs and book hotels and flights, it’s worth doing a quick password reset to ward against unauthorized access. While a password reset will likely suffice, consider that most apps have a competitor that’s equally good, so you can also take the nuclear option and switch services to better protect your location and activity.

If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Friday, January 12, 2024, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Along the way, I’ll explain the meanings of the trickier words and we’ll learn how everything fits together. Beware, there are spoilers below for January 12, NYT Connections #215! Read on if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Connections game. 

If you want an easy way to come back to our Connections hints every day, bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there as well, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle.

Below, I’ll give you some oblique hints at today’s Connections answers. And farther down the page, I’ll reveal the themes and the answers. Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Credit: Connections/NYT

Does today’s Connections game require any special knowledge?

Knowing a bit about your car (whether driving or maintenance) might help you to recognize some of the ambiguous words, but there aren’t any obscure references today. 

Hints for the themes in today’s Connections puzzle

Here are some spoiler-free hints for the groupings in today’s Connections:

• Yellow category – Something to debate.

• Green category – The time of your life.

• Blue category – Part of your ride.

• Purple category – Sounds like a box of paints, in a way.

Does today’s Connections game involve any wordplay?

Yes, there is a category based on soundalikes.

Ready to hear the answers? Keep scrolling if you want a little more help.

BEWARE: Spoilers follow for today’s Connections puzzle!

We’re about to give away some of the answers. Scroll slowly if you don’t want the whole thing spoiled. (The full solution is a bit further down.)

What are the ambiguous words in today’s Connections?

• BLEW is, strangely, the only past-tense verb on today’s board. Take this as a hint that it’s not related to blowing at all.

• A CHAPTER can be a part of a book, or a PERIOD of your life.

• You can POINT at something, or you can argue a POINT–in other words, the MATTER at hand.

• Cars have WHEELs on the road, but you might also refer to the steering apparatus as “the WHEEL” (for example, when asking Jesus to take it)

What are the categories in today’s Connections?

• Yellow: TOPIC OF DISCUSSION

• Green: SECTION OF ONE’S LIFE

• Blue: PARTS OF A CAR, INFORMALLY.

• Purple: COLOR HOMOPHONES

DOUBLE BEWARE: THE SOLUTION IS BELOW

Ready to learn the answers to today’s Connections puzzle? I give them all away below.

What are the yellow words in today’s Connections?

The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward. The theme for today’s yellow group is TOPIC OF DISCUSSION and the words are: ISSUE, MATTER, POINT, SUBJECT.

What are the green words in today’s Connections?

The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest. The theme for today’s green category is SECTION OF ONE’S LIFE and the words are: CHAPTER, PERIOD, PHASE, STAGE.

What are the blue words in today’s Connections?

The blue grouping is the second-hardest. The theme for today’s blue category is PARTS OF A CAR, INFORMALLY. and the words are: DASH, SHOCK, TANK, WHEEL.

What are the purple words in today’s Connections?

The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest. The theme for today’s purple category is COLOR HOMOPHONES and the words are: BLEW, CHORAL, READ, ROWS.

How I solved today’s Connections

BLEW puzzled me–it’s the only past-tense verb here–unless you read READ as past tense, which it turns out you should, but not for that reason. This board was a stumper, but I tackled it piece by piece, asking what each word might have in common with the others. 

I got the SUBJECTs of discussion first, 🟨 and then the PHASEs of life. 🟩 Only then did I realize BLEW and ROWS could be misspellings of color names, alongside CHORAL, which had similarly puzzled me since it was the only adjective, and a fairly specialized one at that. 🟪 The car parts were obvious after that. 🟦

Connections 
Puzzle #215
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦

How to play Connections

I have a full guide to playing Connections, but here’s a refresher on the rules:

First, find the Connections game either on the New York Times website or in their Crossword app. You’ll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase. Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common. Often they are all the same type of thing (for example: RAIN, SLEET, HAIL, and SNOW are all types of wet weather) but sometimes there is wordplay involved (for example, BUCKET, GUEST, TOP TEN, and WISH are all types of lists: bucket list, guest list, and so on).

Select four items and hit the Submit button. If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed. (Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.) If your guess was incorrect, you’ll get a chance to try again.

You win when you’ve correctly identified all four groups. But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.

How to win Connections

The most important thing to know to win Connections is that the groupings are designed to be tricky. Expect to see overlapping groups. For example, one puzzle seemed to include six breakfast foods: BACON, EGG, PANCAKE, OMELET, WAFFLE, and CEREAL. But BACON turned out to be part of a group of painters along with CLOSE, MUNCH, and WHISTLER, and EGG was in a group of things that come by the dozen (along with JUROR, ROSE, and MONTH). So don’t hit “submit” until you’ve confirmed that your group of four contains only those four things.

If you’re stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to have no connection to the others. If all that comes to mind when you see WHISTLER is the painting nicknamed “Whistler’s Mother,” you might be on to something. When I solved that one, I ended up googling whether there was a painter named Close, because Close didn’t fit any of the obvious themes, either.

Another way to win when you’re stuck is, obviously, to read a few helpful hints–which is why we share these pointers every day. Check back tomorrow for the next puzzle!