Lots Of People Are Learning The Religious Definition Of "Prior" Thanks To Today's NYT Connections Groups

Happy Sunday, puzzlers! We are 100 percent ready for some football. It’s Week One of the NFL season, but maybe that’s not your jam, especially if you’re a 9-year-old who’s beyond geeked up for the Minecraft movie. And if you’re older than that and still geeked up for the Minecraft movie, well, that’s awesome, too! Whichever way you feel, just don’t be a jerk about it, ya know?

Anyway. Your daily sweet 16 words are back and ready for your best grouping efforts. The popular Connections brainbuster from The New York Times has four groups of words with a shared theme or commonality, but they’re shuffled into random order for you to figure out. Remember to take your time—many words have multiple meanings, so think twice before you click.

Today’s words: FROST, BEACH, PUMP, POPE, RACE, BISHOP, PET SHOP, POUND, HARDY, BEAT, PRIOR, BAKE, THROB, BAD, PREHEAT, and PASTOR

Above is your visual hint for today’s yellow group. Maybe it’s right on the money for you? If you’re still scratching your head, well, hate to tell you, but yellow is the easiest group.

Need a verbal clue? These are all words you’d hear Betty Crocker say, if Betty Crocker was a real person. (She wasn’t—sorry to burst your bubble.)

Tapping out? Honestly, we don’t blame you. Some of the yellow and green words were way too close for comfort today. Yellow’s supposed to be the easy group, so we call dirty pool on The New York Times...

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Today’s yellow group answer is Verbs in a Cake Recipe and its words are BAKE, BEAT, FROST, and PREHEAT

There’s your visual hint for today’s blue group. It might be your eureka! moment. (No, sorry, that was not a clue.) Or it might not have helped at all. Hey, we try.

Time for the verbal clue: Today, Sunday, is the day you would be most likely to see one of these.

No? We got the first three of these in a hurry, but the fourth one was a serious curveball. Thankfully it didn’t fit in any of the other categories...

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Today’s blue group answer is Ecclesiastical Titles and its words are BISHOP, PASTOR, POPE, and PRIOR

We’re going to go out on a limb and say this is a pretty powerful visual clue. Will it get you to the finish line? That’s the catch—you still have to find the right words.

Need the verbal clue too? These things happen at the gym, or on a date, or during a horror movie (especially after a jump-scare).

Give up? You’ll see what we mean about the green and yellow categories being uncharacteristically nasty today...

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Today’s green group answer is What a Heart Does When Excited and its words are POUND, PUMP, RACE, and THROB

The purple group is the hardest one, so don’t kick yourself if this visual hint does not immediately take you to the promised land.

Here’s your verbal clue: There’s a movie, two bands, and depending on your tastes, either a book series or a legendary wrestling tag team in here.

Crying uncle? Today was one of those odd days that we actually got the purple group first. All that pop culture knowledge finally came in handy...

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Today’s purple group answer is ___ Boys and its words are BAD, BEACH, HARDY, and PET SHOP

That wraps up your weekend of Connections hints—we’ll see you next Saturday!