For the historical NYT Connections hints today, the May 19, 2025, answers are puzzle #708: fundraising events, Monopoly board spaces, toothed-whale features, and homophones of foot parts. The trickiest set is BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, and TOW, which sound like ball, heel, sole, and toe.
This page covers the exact May 19, 2025, Connections puzzle rather than the current daily grid. Hints come first, followed by the complete answers and explanations for all 16 words.
Key takeaways
- NYT Connections puzzle #708 was published for Monday, May 19, 2025.
- The yellow category is FUNDRAISING EVENT: BALL, BENEFIT, FUNCTION, and GALA.
- The green category is SPACES ON A MONOPOLY BOARD: AVENUE, CHANCE, RAILROAD, and UTILITY.
- The blue category is FEATURES OF A TOOTHED WHALE: BLUBBER, FLIPPER, FLUKE, and MELON.
- The purple category is HOMOPHONES OF PARTS OF THE FOOT: BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, and TOW.
What are today’s Connections clues for May 19, 2025?
The four clues for the May 19, 2025, Connections puzzle point to a fundraising event, Monopoly board spaces, toothed-whale anatomy, and words that sound like parts of the foot. The puzzle’s 16-word grid is MELON, BALL, CHANCE, BAWL, SOUL, BLUBBER, FUNCTION, FLUKE, UTILITY, TOW, AVENUE, BENEFIT, FLIPPER, RAILROAD, GALA, and HEAL.
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Spoiler warning: The full Connections May 19 answers appear below the hints. Stop before the solution section if you are still solving.
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How does NYT Connections work?
The New York Times Help Center defines Connections as “a word game that challenges players to find themes between words.” Each puzzle presents 16 words, and the goal is to arrange the words into four groups of four. The groups are color-coded from yellow, which is generally the easiest, through green and blue to purple, which is generally the trickiest.
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The challenge is not simply identifying four words that seem related. A word can appear to fit more than one possible group, so the correct solution must account for every entry and leave no word stranded. In this grid, BALL, FLUKE, FUNCTION, BENEFIT, and MELON all have plausible alternative meanings that can pull a solver toward a wrong grouping.
Progressive hints for the May 19 Connections puzzle
These clues become more specific as you go. The category names and answers are withheld until the spoiler reveal below.
- Hint 1: One group involves a kind of event that can raise money.
- Hint 2: One group contains spaces or space-types from a famous property-trading board game.
- Hint 3: One group concerns anatomy associated with toothed whales.
- Hint 4: The hardest group consists of words that sound like parts of the foot.
What are the NYT Connections answers for May 19, 2025?
The answers to Connections #708 are shown below. The four categories are FUNDRAISING EVENT, SPACES ON A MONOPOLY BOARD, FEATURES OF A TOOTHED WHALE, and HOMOPHONES OF PARTS OF THE FOOT.
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| Color | Category | Four answers | Why they fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | FUNDRAISING EVENT | BALL, BENEFIT, FUNCTION, GALA | Each can describe a formal or social event held to raise money or support a cause. |
| Green | SPACES ON A MONOPOLY BOARD | AVENUE, CHANCE, RAILROAD, UTILITY | These are Monopoly property names or board-space types. |
| Blue | FEATURES OF A TOOTHED WHALE | BLUBBER, FLIPPER, FLUKE, MELON | Each is associated with the anatomy of toothed whales. |
| Purple | HOMOPHONES OF PARTS OF THE FOOT | BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, TOW | They sound like ball, heel, sole, and toe. |
Yellow: FUNDRAISING EVENT — BALL, BENEFIT, FUNCTION, GALA
BALL, BENEFIT, FUNCTION, and GALA can all refer to a formal or social event organized to raise money or support a charitable cause. The misleading entry is FUNCTION: outside this category, the word can mean a purpose, an operation, or a mathematical relationship.
The May 19 answer guide from Jagran Josh also identifies these four words as the yellow group. BALL is especially useful as a trap because it later reappears in the purple category as the sound-alike target for BAWL—but BALL itself belongs to the fundraising group in this puzzle.
Green: SPACES ON A MONOPOLY BOARD — AVENUE, CHANCE, RAILROAD, UTILITY
AVENUE, CHANCE, RAILROAD, and UTILITY are associated with spaces or space-types on a Monopoly board. Classic property names use “Avenue,” while Railroads and Utilities are distinct property types and Chance is a familiar board space and card category.
Hasbro’s official Monopoly rules describe railroads, utilities, and Chance spaces within the game’s board and play structure. This group is likely to be one of the more immediately recognizable categories for solvers familiar with the property-trading game.
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BLUBBER, FLIPPER, FLUKE, and MELON are features associated with toothed whales. The category is more specialized than a general “things found in the ocean” group, and MELON is the most unexpected entry because it is also an ordinary fruit.
- Blubber is a fatty connective-tissue layer that helps with insulation, energy storage, and buoyancy.
- Flippers are paired front limbs used for stability and maneuvering.
- Flukes are the two horizontal tail lobes that provide swimming power.
- The melon is the rounded forehead structure found in many toothed whales and associated with producing or focusing sound.
The NOAA Ocean Today whale-anatomy guide provides background on whale body structures, while the American Museum of Natural History’s whales educator guide offers additional educational context. FLUKE can mislead solvers because it also means a lucky accident, and MELON can initially look like a food-related word rather than an anatomical term.
Purple: HOMOPHONES OF PARTS OF THE FOOT — BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, TOW
BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, and TOW sound like ball, heel, sole, and toe when read aloud. The displayed words are not foot parts themselves, which creates the largest gap between the visible entries and the intended category.
| Displayed entry | Sounds like | Foot part |
|---|---|---|
| BAWL | ball | Ball of the foot |
| HEAL | heel | Heel |
| SOUL | sole | Sole |
| TOW | toe | Toe |
The archived solution for Connections #708 confirms the homophone pattern. This is probably the final group many solvers notice because the meanings of BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, and TOW do not directly describe anatomy; the connection appears only when the words are sounded out.
Which Connections categories are most misleading?
The fundraising and Monopoly categories rely on familiar vocabulary, while the whale group requires more domain knowledge and the foot group requires the greatest amount of wordplay. That contrast makes the puzzle difficult without requiring an official difficulty score.
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| Category | Primary challenge | Potential distraction |
|---|---|---|
| Fundraising event | Recognizing “function” as an event rather than an abstract term | FUNCTION can suggest mathematics or programming. |
| Monopoly board spaces | Seeing the words as game terminology | AVENUE, RAILROAD, and UTILITY can look like unrelated nouns. |
| Toothed-whale features | Knowing specialized anatomy | MELON is also a fruit and FLUKE can mean a lucky accident. |
| Foot homophones | Reading the words aloud and switching spellings | The entries do not literally name parts of the foot. |
A sensible solving path would be to spot the fundraising-event group or the Monopoly group first, then use the reduced grid to recognize the whale-anatomy terms. The purple group becomes clearer once the remaining words are tested for sound-alike relationships. This is a practical solving strategy, not a measured ranking of category difficulty.
Want more Connections puzzles?
Readers who enjoy the daily game can continue solving offline with the official Connections puzzle book. Simon & Schuster describes the official Connections book as the first book edition of the category-matching puzzle and identifies Wyna Liu as the New York Times puzzle editor associated with the game. The publisher page does not establish that the book contains the May 19, 2025, puzzle, so no such claim is made here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Connections May 19 answers?
The NYT Connections answers for May 19, 2025, are BALL, BENEFIT, FUNCTION, GALA; AVENUE, CHANCE, RAILROAD, UTILITY; BLUBBER, FLIPPER, FLUKE, MELON; and BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, TOW. Those sets correspond to fundraising events, Monopoly board spaces, toothed-whale features, and homophones of parts of the foot.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWhat number was the May 19, 2025, Connections puzzle?
Connections puzzle #708 was the New York Times puzzle published for Monday, May 19, 2025. The date is historical, so it is not the current daily Connections puzzle.
Why are BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, and TOW in the same Connections group?
The purple Connections category is HOMOPHONES OF PARTS OF THE FOOT. BAWL sounds like ball, HEAL like heel, SOUL like sole, and TOW like toe.
The Bottom Line
Connections #708, published on May 19, 2025, groups its words into fundraising events, Monopoly board spaces, toothed-whale features, and homophones of foot parts. The key trick is the purple set: BAWL, HEAL, SOUL, and TOW sound like ball, heel, sole, and toe.
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