Looking for some Connections hints to help with today's puzzle on Wednesday, 18th February? We get it! Connections is designed to be a moderate workout for your brain. It's no walk in the park, but it doesn't have to be a marathon sprint, either! If you've found yourself pulling out your hair over today's puzzle, we've got your back.

Check out our hints below to get as much or as little help as you need. Your streak is safe with us!

In this guide:

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words ""Hook"", ""Nana"", ""Peter"", and ""Wendy"" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, ""Action"", ""Ballpark"", ""Go"", and ""Stick"" are all words which commonly come just before the word ""Figure"". These are the kinds of Connections you'll need to make to solve the puzzle.

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

Click here to play today's Connections puzzle!

Below you'll find various hints for today's Connections. Each of the below hints will make it progressively easier for you to solve today's puzzle. First we'll reveal the words in today's Connections, followed by our Connections hint for each group. Then we'll reveal one word inside each group, followed by the groups themselves; and finally, at the bottom of this page, we'll reveal the answers to today's Connections puzzle. Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

FREE-RANGE

BAD

BANTAM

CRESTED

CRIMP

CURL

FEATHER

FLY

HEAVY

LEGHORN

RAD

SHAVING

SOUR

TEASE

TOPICAL

WICKED

Here are your Connections hints for today:

Yellow: Farrah Fawcett's stylist's instructions.

Green: Old-school approval.

Blue: Poultry characterizers.

Purple: These words all have something very important in common.

Extra hint 1: Every group has a word containing the letter 'E'.

Extra hint 2: More than one group looks backward.

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

Yellow: Feather.

Green: Wicked.

Blue: Crested.

Purple: Sour.

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

Yellow: Retro Hair Directives

Green: Retro Slang for Cool

Blue: Chicken Descriptors

Purple: ___ Cream

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Wednesday, 18th February:

Yellow: Retro Hair Directives (Crimp, Curl, Feather, Tease)

Green: Retro Slang for Cool (Bad, Fly, Rad, Wicked)

Blue: Chicken Descriptors (Bantam, Crested, Free-Range, Leghorn)

Purple: ___ Cream (Heavy, Shaving, Sour, Topical)

No, "rad" and "crimp" are not part of the same totally tubular 80s mood board. As tempting as it was to throw them all into the same nostalgia pile, this grid has other plans! They definitely threw me through a loop, though, and figuring out which retro-sounding word went in each category was definitely tough.

Meanwhile, the chicken-related words coupled with "heavy" and "sour" had me thinking I was sorting through menu descriptions. But, alas, I learned once again to resist the urge to group by aesthetic and look closer to decipher whether I was working with slang, descriptors, or a very dependable dairy product.

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!