NYT Connections Answer

Welcome back to another day of wordplay! If you’re tackling the August 19, 2026, puzzle, you might find that Wyna Liu has served up a mix of the remarkably simple and the "wait, what?" tricky.

Whether you are looking for a gentle NYT Connections hint to get you over the hump or you need the full answer for 2026-08-19, I’ve got you covered. Today’s board started off feeling like a walk in the park, but that Purple category had a few of us scratching our heads for a moment.

Let’s break it down!

Today's Hints

Before we dive into the full reveal, here are some nudges if you want to try and solve it on your own:

• Yellow Category: Think of things that are incredibly easy to accomplish.
• Green Category: These words all describe the act of keeping something out of sight or making it hard to see.
• Blue Category: Every word here is the first half of a popular sport that ends in the same four letters.
• Purple Category: Read these words out loud. They sound exactly like the titles of famous animated movies.

Yellow: Piece of Cake

These are all common idioms or slang terms for a task that requires very little effort.

• BREEZE
• CINCH
• PICNIC
• SNAP

Why they fit: If a job is a CINCH or a SNAP, you’re saying it's easy. Calling something a PICNIC or a BREEZE carries that same "no-stress" energy.

Green: Conceal

This category focuses on synonyms for hiding or covering something up.

• BLANKET
• HIDE
• MASK
• OBSCURE

Why they fit: While HIDE and MASK are straightforward, BLANKET (used as a verb) and OBSCURE describe the act of covering something so it can’t be easily identified or seen.

Blue: Words Before "Ball" in Sport Names

This is a classic "prefix" category. Each of these words is the first half of a sport involving a ball.

• BASE
• BASKET
• FOOT
• PICKLE

Why they fit: You have Baseball, Basketball, Football, and the ever-growing-in-popularity Pickleball. "Pickle" was the clever distractor here, as it might have made you look for food-related words!

Purple: Homophones of CGI-Animated Films

This was the "stumper" for today. These words are pronounced exactly the same as popular computer-animated movies from studios like Pixar and Dreamworks.

• ANTS (Antz)
• COCOA (Coco)
• RHEO (Rio)
• SEOUL (Soul)

Why they fit: This is a classic Purple "wordplay" category. You have to move past the meaning of the words (like the capital of South Korea or a hot drink) and listen to how they sound. RHEO (often a prefix for flow) sounds like the bird-tastic movie Rio, and SEOUL is a perfect homophone for Pixar’s Soul.

Final Thoughts for August 19, 2026

Today’s puzzle was a masterclass in distraction. Seeing PICKLE and COCOA might have led you toward a "food" category that didn't exist. The key was realizing that BREEZE, CINCH, and SNAP were too closely related to be anything other than the easy Yellow group.

If you got the Purple group first, pat yourself on the back—that was a tough one to spot without a few eliminations!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How do you play NYT Connections?

The goal is to find four groups of four words that share a common thread. Select four words and tap "Submit." You have four mistakes allowed before the game ends.

When does NYT Connections reset?

The puzzle resets daily at midnight in your local time zone.

What do the colors mean in Connections?

The colors represent the difficulty level:

• Yellow: Straightforward/Easiest
• Green: Common terms/Intermediate
• Blue: Specific knowledge or "Words that follow..." categories
• Purple: Wordplay, homophones, or the most abstract connections/Hardest

Can there be more than one correct answer?

Each puzzle has only one unique solution. While some words might seem to fit in multiple categories, there is only one way to arrange all 16 words into four distinct groups of four.