NYT Connections Hints March 15: Why Today’s Puzzle is Tricky

You’re staring at sixteen words, and honestly, none of them seem to belong together. It’s that familiar morning ritual where the NYT Connections grid looks like a random collection of dictionary rejects. If you’re playing the March 15 puzzle, you’ve likely noticed a few words that feel like they should be names, while others sound like they belong in a courtroom.

Don't panic. You’ve got this.

Connections is less about what a word means and more about how it behaves. Today's puzzle—Number 643—is a classic example of why Wyna Liu is the master of the "red herring." It’s a Saturday, so the difficulty spike is real. People often get tripped up because they see a pattern that isn't actually there, like a group of four female names.

Let's break down the NYT Connections hints March 15 so you can keep your streak alive without losing your mind.

What’s Tripping People Up Today?

The biggest trap in the March 15 grid involves names. You might see BARB, MAY, PEG, and SUE. It’s so tempting to click them. You think, "Easy, four classic names."

Stop.

That’s exactly what the puzzle wants you to do. While they are names, they serve much more specific purposes in their actual categories. If you waste a guess on "Women's Names," you're going to be one mistake closer to a "Game Over" screen.

Instead, look at the verbs. Look at the objects. Is a PEG just a name, or is it a piece of hardware? Is SUE a person, or an action you take when someone owes you money?

Hints for the March 15 Categories

If you just want a nudge in the right direction without the full reveal, here are some conceptual hints for the groups.

• Yellow Group: Think about things that are physically sharp. If you touched one of these, you’d probably say "ouch."
• Green Group: This one is for the musicians or anyone who has ever held a guitar. These are parts of a specific type of instrument.
• Blue Group: Channel your inner lawyer. If you’re in the middle of a lawsuit, these words are going to come up constantly.
• Purple Group: This is the wordplay category. It’s based on a very famous nursery rhyme/poem. Think about making a wish at night.

NYT Connections Hints March 15: The Specific Words

Let's get a bit more granular. If you're stuck on a specific word, here is how they actually fit into the logic of the puzzle.

The Sharp Stuff (Yellow)

The yellow group is usually the most straightforward, though "straightforward" is a relative term in this game. These are all Sharp Protrusions.

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1. BARB (Like on a wire)
2. BRISTLE (On a brush or a cactus)
3. NEEDLE (Self-explanatory, hopefully)
4. SPINE (Think biological, like a porcupine)

The Music Room (Green)

This category focuses on Features of Stringed Instruments. If you’ve ever tuned a violin or a guitar, these will click.

1. BRIDGE (The part that holds the strings up)
2. NECK (The long part where your fingers go)
3. PEG (The thing you turn to tune it)
4. STRING (Kind of obvious, right?)

The Legal Battle (Blue)

These are Litigation Verbs. They represent the technical actions taken during a legal proceeding.

1. CHARGE (To formally accuse)
2. MOVE (To make a motion in court)
3. SERVE (To deliver legal papers)
4. SUE (To initiate a lawsuit)

The Starry Night (Purple)

This is the "hard" one. It’s based on the nursery rhyme "Star Light, Star Bright." The words are all part of the famous lines: "I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight."

1. MAY
2. MIGHT
3. TONIGHT
4. WISH

How to Avoid "Rage Solving"

We’ve all been there. You have one mistake left, you’re "one away" from a group, and you start clicking frantically. Wyna Liu actually recommends waiting as long as possible before you commit to a guess.

In today's puzzle, the overlap between PEG (Green) and NEEDLE/BARB (Yellow) is a total nightmare. Also, BARB and SUE and MAY and PEG sitting there looking like a group of friends from a 1950s sitcom is just cruel.

Try this: Shuffle the board. Seriously. When your eyes are locked onto a "fake" connection, your brain struggles to see the real one. Shuffling forces your brain to re-process the words as individual units rather than part of that fake "names" group you've built in your head.

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Deep Logic: Why These Categories Work

The brilliance of the March 15 puzzle lies in the parts of speech. Look at the Blue group. CHARGE, MOVE, SERVE, and SUE are all verbs. But they are also nouns. You can have a "charge" on your credit card. You can "move" a box. You can "serve" a tennis ball.

The trick to high-level Connections play is identifying which specific version of the word is being used. Today, the "legal" version of these verbs is the only way to group four of them together perfectly.

Likewise, the Purple category is a "fill-in-the-blank" or "hidden theme" style. These are the hardest because the connection isn't in the definition of the word. MAY and MIGHT are auxiliary verbs, but WISH is a noun/verb and TONIGHT is an adverb. They have zero linguistic connection. Their only bond is that they live in the same poem.

Step-by-Step Strategy for March 15

If you haven't finished yet, try this order. It’s usually easiest to peel away the layers from simplest to most complex.

1. Isolate the Sharp Objects: Find BARB, NEEDLE, BRISTLE, and SPINE. Once those are gone, the "Names" trap is partially disarmed because BARB is no longer an option.
2. Look for the Instrument Parts: Identify BRIDGE, NECK, and PEG. The word STRING is the final piece here. Now the board is half empty.
3. Check the Verbs: You’re left with CHARGE, MOVE, SERVE, SUE, MAY, MIGHT, TONIGHT, and WISH. Look at the first four. They all scream "courtroom."
4. The Final Four: By the time you get to Purple, you don't even need to know the connection. But it's much more satisfying when you realize they all belong to that star-gazing rhyme.

Actionable Tips for Tomorrow's Puzzle

To get better at Connections, you need to broaden how you look at the grid.

• Say the words out loud. Sometimes the sound of a word triggers a connection that the spelling doesn't.
• Watch for "Words that follow X" or "Words that start with Y." These are common Purple tropes.
• Check for synonyms first, but don't trust them. If you find five synonyms, one of them belongs somewhere else.
• Practice the "one away" rule. If the game tells you that you're "one away," don't just swap one random word. Look at the entire remaining board and see if there's a word that fits better into a different potential group.

For the March 15 puzzle, the secret was ignoring the names and focusing on the functions. Once you stop seeing "Barb" as a person and start seeing it as a sharp point, the whole grid starts to crumble.

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To keep improving your game, try looking up past puzzles in the NYT archive. Solving older puzzles helps you recognize the "styles" of different editors. You'll start to notice patterns in how they use red herrings, which makes you much harder to fool when the daily reset happens at midnight.