Hey there, Connectors! I hope you’ve had a fantastic weekend so far.

I have a point to make with this intro, so humor me.

I was recently playing Overwatch (as I often do) in my favorite mode, in which you play as a randomly selected character and switch to another after each death. A player on the other team was raging in the text chat because me and two others on my team each had the same character, essentially a robot that can fly and can be tough to take down. Bear in mind, we have no control over our character selections.

When I was the only player on my team left with the hero, this person said, “where are your pussy characters now???” or some such. I am not especially proud of this, but I noticed their character was low on health, so I flew toward them, bashed them with a quick strike to kill them and immediately dropped an “in your face, dumbass” message in the chat.

When a match of Overwatch ends, I’ll always drop a message saying something like “gg friends” (i.e. good game) with a heart in the chat, just to be nice. I usually scold people for being toxic in this casual mode too. This time, though, I wrote something like “gg to everyone smart enough to understand we can’t choose our own characters in this mode ♥.” Again, not entirely proud of that, but I had to try and put that jerk in their place.

I’m very much of the mindset that when someone is an asshole, you should kill ‘em with kindness. If that doesn’t work, clap back at them just enough to shut them up without stooping to their level. It’s part of my “don’t tolerate the intolerant or dickheads” mentality.

Before we begin, we have a great little community on Discord, where we chat about NYT Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It’s a fun hangout spot, and you’re more than welcome to join us.

Discord is also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare (or not-so-rare) occasions that I mess something up. I don’t look at Twitter much.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Sunday, August 16 are coming right up.

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are...

And the level one hints for today’s Connections groups are:

Need some extra help? 

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Let’s take a look at one word for each group.

Today’s Connections word hints are…

Today’s Connections groups are...

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

I was sure pretty much immediately FROM NEANDER had to be a purple. I was thinking of it in terms of "ending with words for walk with one letter changed" (i.e. "meander"). But I couldn't see what else might work.

In any case, I sidestepped the red herring of pianos (CONCERT, GRAND, PLAYER, UPRIGHT) to get the yellows. I am thankful to GIG for seeing me through there.

HALF and STEP then helped me get the blues. The greens were up next, thanks to AGENT and PARTY. That left the purples. I did not get that at all, though FROM NEANDER (as in "neanderthal") should have been enough of a hint but I did not care for this group.

Streak = 532.

How did you get on this time? Here's my grid:

🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪

(I tried to make the hints all Legend of Zelda references after initially thinking of "a link to the past" for the purples, but I couldn't make it work, so I abandoned the idea.)

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. I’ll be back over at Forbes for the Monday-Friday editions for the column. And if you haven’t subscribed to Pastimes already, definitely do that! It would be super sweet of you.

P.S. I have had a song stuck in my head for weeks that I’ve been wanting to use as a Sunday recommendation, but I cannot remember the title or artist. Maddening. It’s an older song, I know that much. I’m sure I will find out what it is at some point, but until then I will remain frustrated.

Anyway, you can’t really go wrong with Damien Rice. He’s incredible. I’m in a “9 Crimes” kind of mood today:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!

On weekdays, you can find this column over at Forbes. Please follow my blog there for more coverage of NYT Connections and other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot!

Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. Also, subscribe to this newsletter if you haven’t already!