The New York Times Connections puzzle asks solvers to sort 16 tiles into four secret groups of four. Each group shares a hidden theme, but the tiles are designed to misdirect with overlapping meanings and visual similarities. Today’s grid leans hard into symbols: dots, lines, and shapes that could just as easily belong on a keyboard, a math worksheet, or the face of a die.
If today’s pattern-heavy board has you seeing spots (literally), this guide offers layered hints first, then the full set of answers. Scroll slowly if you want just a nudge before revealing the complete solution.
NYT Connections Puzzle Overview: 7 February 2026
Today’s Connections board is a visual thinker’s delight. Instead of wordy misdirection, most tiles are simple shapes built from dots and straight lines. At first glance, everything looks like it could belong to the same set of symbols, which makes it tempting to mash together anything with circles or plus signs.
Beneath that uniform surface, though, the puzzle splits these icons into four distinct realms: gaming, math, writing, and typography. The trickiness comes from tiles that could fit more than one space: a plus sign might look like punctuation, while a column of dots could resemble both a face of a die and a piece of punctuation. Careful attention to where you’ve seen each symbol before is what unlocks the grid.
NYT Connections Hints: 7 February 2026
Need a gentle nudge rather than the full solution? Here are graded hints for each category, ordered from the most straightforward set to the most abstract.
Category 1
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Think about a classic six-sided object used in tabletop games.
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Focus on how many dots appear on each face.
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All four items here are numbers, but they are represented visually rather than spelled out.
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If you can “roll” it, you are in the right place.
Category 2
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These symbols live comfortably on a calculator or in a basic math problem.
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Each one signals a different operation or relationship between numbers.
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You would see them in equations long before you saw them in prose.
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Picture writing out a simple expression you might solve in school.
Category 3
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All four of these show up in written sentences.
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Some separate ideas, some show omission, and some mark quoted speech.
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On a keyboard, they are scattered across different keys but serve the same broad purpose.
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Think “What helps structure or decorate text when typing?”
Category 4
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Here the puzzle stops caring about meaning and leans on shape.
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All four answers belong to the same part of the alphabet, visually simple and built from straight lines.
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They are not names of symbols, but the symbols themselves.
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Imagine a minimalist font where these characters are basically sticks and crosses.
NYT Connections Answers: 7 February 2026
Ready to see how everything fits together? Here are today’s groups, with category titles and member tiles.
Category 1
Category 2
Category 3
Category 4
Conclusion & Quick Strategy Tip
The 7 February 2026 Connections puzzle is a good reminder that not every challenge is about wordplay—sometimes it is about visual context. When many tiles share a similar look, start by asking where each symbol most naturally belongs: on a die, in an equation, in a sentence, or in the alphabet. Once one of those domains snaps into focus, the rest of the board becomes much easier to untangle.
Quick strategy tip: when symbols feel interchangeable, sort first by role rather than by shape. Group “things that operate on numbers,” “things that control sentences,” and so on. That functional lens cuts through the visual noise and prevents accidental mixes between math symbols, punctuation, and letterforms.
