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NYT Connections hint and answers, Thu 30th Jan

Need some Connections hints for today? Read our guide for help with Connections #598.

An abstract image with an altered Connections logo in the centre, surrounded by circles connected by webbed lines.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT
Marloes Valentina Stella avatar
Guide by Marloes Valentina Stella Contributor
Published on

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Wednesday 12th February!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Thursday, 30th January? Just group the right words together and the Connections puzzle is done - while that sounds simple enough, it's actually a daunting task as the New York Times doesn't make their puzzles easy. We're here to help you out!

Let's not jump straight to the answers though. With the help of some hints and small spoilers from this guide, you can find today's puzzle solution on your own. If the puzzle is still too tricky, we'll give you the answers too.

In this guide:

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Halo Rigatoni Air Wings
Romeo Harp Dip Dwell
Pizza Parish Linger Vibe
Bernie Aura Beer Insist

How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words "Hook", "Nana", "Peter", and "Wendy" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, "Action", "Ballpark", "Go", and "Stick" are all words which commonly come just before the word "Figure".

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

Connections hint for Thursday 30th January

Here are your Connections hints for today:

  • Yellow: These words are related to the impression you may get from another person.
  • Green: Think of comfort food.
  • Blue: When someone just won't drop the topic, they...
  • Purple: This group has something to do with cities.
  • Extra hint 1: 'Romeo' and 'Bernie' aren't about people.
  • Extra hint 2: One group contains words hidden within larger words.

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

  • Yellow: Halo
  • Green: Pizza
  • Blue: Harp
  • Purple: Romeo
Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

What are today's Connections groups?

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

  • Yellow: Intangible Quality
  • Green: Game Day Fare
  • Blue: Keep Going On About, With "On"
  • Purple: Starting With European Capitals

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

What is today's Connections answer?

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Thursday, 30th January:

  • Yellow: Intangible Quality (Air, Aura, Halo, Vibe)
  • Green: Game Day Fare (Beer, Dip, Pizza, Wings)
  • Blue: Keep Going On About, With "On" (Dwell, Harp, Insist, Linger)
  • Purple: Starting With European Capitals (Bernie, Parish, Rigatoni, Romeo)
A screenshot of the Connections answer from January 30, 2025.
Here are the January 30 Connections answers. | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/NYT

Tricky, that was. It took me far longer than I care to admit to find the purple group. Like most puzzlers, I imagine, I kept thinking of Bernie and Romeo as people, failing to see the city names. Romeo was the first one I eventually noticed, probably because the 'Romeo and Juliet' character has a link to Italy too (the story isn't set in Rome though - it's in Verona, if anyone cares to know). I then noticed the 'Paris' in 'parish', which led to the discovery of 'Bern' and eventually 'Riga'.

I consider today's purple category to be above average difficulty, as I think most people, especially non-Europeans, aren't all that familiar with the capitals of Switzerland and Latvia. Good thing the NYT couldn't find any words containing Ljubljana or Skopje.

Besides the purple category, the other three categories seem fairly easy. I immediately linked 'aura' and 'halo' together as well as 'pizza' and 'wings'. Likewise, 'dwell' and 'linger' are just too similar to go unnoticed for long. Once you've found a rather obvious (correct) link between two words, the rest of the group usually follows quickly.

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!

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