Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 25 for puzzle #440 drops down under three compared from yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.4 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. And if the hints aren't enough, you'll find all 4 answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words. Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #439, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #440. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Hearsay
- 🟩 Green: Move stealthily
- 🟦 Blue: Car rental companies
- 🟪 Purple: Ending with chemical elements
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Here's a larger hint: Engage in a little gossip while renting a car as you remember your periodic table, make sure to move like a spy or ninja, your call.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #440?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Hearsay: Rumbling, speculation, talk, whispers
- 🟩 Move stealthily: Creep, slip, steal, tiptoe
- 🟦 Car rental companies: Budget, enterprise, national, thrifty
- 🟪 Ending with chemical elements: Environ, jargon, latin, plead
Finally! After a week where I struggled with puzzles rated 2 difficulty and destroying rated 3 puzzles. Today's is a 2 and it was smooth sailing. You gotta take the wins when you can get them.
Anywho, I started today with the yellow category as I saw rumbling and whispers first followed by speculation and talk. This was after a momentary look at piecing together something talk, latin and jargon but I skipped that idea.
I was in the middle of putting together a cheap connection with budget, steal and thrifty when it suddenly clicked that with enterprise and national I was looking at car rental companies. Sometimes your brain surprises you.
Today's green category could have easily been a yellow, but creep, slip, steal, and tiptoe are all stealthy moves.
Personally, I rarely make the delete a letter or portion of the word to find another connection. So, it's always a relief that I don't take strikes trying to shove bad connections into other groupings.
Today's purple are chemical elements: Env(Iron), J(Argon), La(Tin), and P(Lead).
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #439, which had a difficulty rating of 3.6 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
My yo-yo of a week continues with struggles on level 2 difficulty but knocking it down on level 3s.
In my slightly younger days I had a number of performer friends who got into burlesque, so boa, corset, fan and gloves was a an easy first category. I do not miss feathers.
From there I got the yellow category with display, monitor, screen, terminal.
I got stuck on the blue category because I don't think I've ever heard of buff as a beige shade, let alone a color. The only reason I combined it with cream, fawn and tan is because none of the other words fit the color wheel.
I did take a strike trying to make a nails connection work with finish, buff, tan and bask (a stretch, I know). But it did lead me to seeing colors.
I never saw the purple category of language homophones but put together in the final category I got it. It's clever with bask (Basque), check (Czech), finish (Finnish) and tie (Thai).
