NYT Connections Hint - February 21, 2026

Hey fellow word nerds! 🌅 I almost slept through my alarm this morning, so when I spotted LATE, PRESENT, and ABSENT lounging in the same grid, it felt like the universe was roasting me. Today’s puzzle plays double duty: part roll-call sheet, part life-story memoir, plus a sneaky automotive level that drove me (pun totally intended) around the bend. Grab your coffee—let’s gossip about these 16 rascals before we all end up marked ‘excused’ for excessive brain-crease formation.

Word Explanations

• LATE

  • The small voice in my head every time I snooze the alarm. Being LATE is that heart-flutter moment when you’re speed-walking and hoping nobody notices the timestamp; it’s also the attendance flag that haunts former tardy kids forever. Apologies to my 8th-grade math teacher—old habits die hard!

• GREAT

  • GREAT is the gold star we all want on our report card. It’s the understated cousin of ‘awesome’—confident but not shouting. I slotted it in early thinking “meh, filler,” then realized it was actually praising my future self once the grid snapped together. Confidence boost unlocked!

• PAST

  • Ah, the PAST—where all my embarrassing fashion choices live immortalized in family albums. Grammatically it’s yesterday, historically it’s every epoch before now, emotionally it’s that mixtape you can’t delete. Fun (or terrifying) fact: the word shows up in nearly every language; apparently we all love dwelling on what’s behind us.

• LIFE

  • LIFE is the catch-all bucket for every plot twist, cliff-hanger, and side quest we collect. Biologists define it by cells and metabolism; romantics define it by moments that take our breath away. Me? I define it by how many Connections puzzles I can solve before my laptop battery taps out.

• PRESENT

  • The attendance VIP—green check, gold star, virtual hand-raised. PRESENT is also a sneaky homophone: here-and-now vs gift-wrapped surprise. I like to think solving this word is the puzzle’s way of gifting us mindfulness…or at least a momentary ego boost.

• MINION

  • Those googly-eyed yellow scene-stealers from Despicable Me hijacked this word, but MINION also quietly hides “Mini” inside—hence its covert mission in today’s car category. Say it slowly: Min-ion. Once you see the Mini, you can’t unsee it, kind of like realizing the minions are basically toddlers in overalls.

• INFINITIVE

  • Grammar flashback! An INFINITIVE is the “to+verb” form that English teachers love circling in red. But slice off the tail (“to”) and you’ll spot “Infiniti,” the luxe car brand cruising incognito. Linguistics meets luxury—who says grammar can’t be fancy?

• PERFECT

  • Nothing feels quite as PERFECT as dropping in that last tile and seeing the board light up in tidy color blocks. Etymology side note: it comes from Latin “perficere,” meaning to complete. So yeah, perfection is literally finishing stuff—validation for us completionists everywhere.

• SOLID

  • SOLID is the reliable friend who shows up early and brings snacks. It’s sturdy, dependable, and doubles as enthusiastic slang: “That playlist is solid!” In the grid it anchored my confidence—once I locked it in, I knew the rest would click like Lego bricks.

• DODGERS

  • DODGERS makes me think of baseball caps and Brooklyn nostalgia, but peel off the -ERS and you’ve got “Dodge,” revving quietly in the driveway. Word nerd plus sports nerd moment: the team was named because pedestrians used to dodge trolley cars. So the car hides in the name that hid from trolleys—layers on layers!

• EXCUSED

  • EXCUSED is the hall pass of vocabulary—permission granted, no questions asked (well, maybe a note). It carries that sweet scent of legitimized absence, like a snow day written in adult-speak. Confession: I used to forge the word in my brain every Monday morning.

• BACKGROUND

  • Your BACKGROUND is the wallpaper of your life story—subtle but setting the mood. Techies think desktop images, genealogists think ancestry, cinematographers think soft-focus scenery. I like to imagine mine decorated with doodles of every book I’ve ever dog-eared.

• ABSENT

  • ABSENT is the void where a puzzle piece should be, the silent seat in class, the bubble on the attendance sheet that triggers mom-texts. Fun fact: its Latin root means “to be away,” which sounds almost poetic until you realize it also means missed participation points.

• AUDITS

  • Nothing screams adulthood like the word AUDITS—tax tremors, receipt scavenger hunts, fluorescent-lit waiting rooms. Strip the suffix and “Audi” zooms out, sleek and German-engineered. So really, this word is equal parts dread and vroom-vroom fantasy, depending on which letters you focus on.

• HISTORY

  • HISTORY: the dusty textbook we swore we’d never revisit, yet here it is hogging the bestseller list in our memories. From Latin “historia,” meaning inquiry—basically the universe’s invitation to ask, “How did we get here?” Plus, delete the tail and you’ll never find a hidden car; this one’s purely experience-driven.

• PHEW

  • PHEW is the verbal exhale after dodging a metaphorical (or literal) projectile. It’s onomatopoeia at its finest: you can practically hear the sweat drop. I clicked the final tile, sighed “phew,” and realized I’d literally lived the word. Meta achievement unlocked!

Theme Hints

1. EXPERIENCE

   • Think résumé buzzwords and nostalgic sighs—what four words sum up the story of you?

2. ATTENDANCE STATUS

   • Roll-call time! Which words keep track of who’s in the room, running behind, or playing hooky?

3. COMMENTARY ABOUT YOUR CONNECTIONS RESULTS

   • Imagine your inner monologue after you finish the puzzle—what would you say about your score?

4. CAR BRANDS PLUS TWO LETTERS

   • Look under the hood—each word secretly parks a car brand if you chop the tail.

Answers Explanation

I’m sitting here with my mug half-cold because I kept stopping to stare at the grid—today felt like a mini therapy session. 🤯 One minute I’m ticking off who made it to homeroom, the next I’m nodding along to my own résumé of life experiences, and finally I’m muttering car names like I’m on a game show. When that last blue fell into place I actually whispered “phew” out loud—meta much? Thanks for letting me share the rollercoaster; drop by tomorrow and we’ll see what other chaos the editors have cooked up. Until then, may your coffee stay warm and your categories click faster than a seat belt! 🚗💡