Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 29 for puzzle #476 is one of the hardest puzzles we've seen in a while, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 4.5 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, #475, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #476. 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: Make good on, as a promise
- 🟩 Green: Bedding
- 🟦 Blue: Actions in a card game
- 🟪 Purple: Cabinet departments
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: Today's puzzle should have you thinking about poker tables, snuggling up in bed, and government representatives keeping their word.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #476?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Make good on, as a promise: Fulfill, honor, keep, uphold
- 🟩 Bedding: Blanket, sham, sheet, throw
- 🟦 Actions in a card game: Discard, draw, pass, play
- 🟪 Cabinet departments: Energy, justice, labor, state
Today's difficult level of 4.5 started things off on an intimidating note, but I managed to get the green category right away with blanket, sham, sheet, and throw.
Next came the purple category, which saw me riding high. At first, I thought honor and justice might be related, but with no other clues pointing to positions on the court, my news junky senses kicked in and picked out energy, labor, and state as other federal departments alongside justice.
After that was yellow, the easiest category, with fulfill, honor, keep, and uphold.
With only blue left as the rote fill, I was still able to guess the connection with all the clues being related to card games. Now that I've breezed through one of the toughest puzzles we've ever seen, it's gonna be real embarrassing when I inevitably strike out on the easier ones.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #475, which had a difficulty rating of 4.2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
It took some time but I started with yellow grabbing hybrid and cross which led to blend. I didn't like compound for the group but I was still reeling a bit from an early strike when I tried hotel, house, cruise and compound with the idea being vacation rentals. So, I kept it for the correct answer.
One nice thing about purple is that a surprising number of the hardest grouping categories are just ____ [word] or [word] ____.
Sometimes if you're stuck try adding a word or creating a phrase and you'll probably find purple. That's how I got yesterday's. At some point, I got to cruise control (especially since cruise ship was clearly out) and the other three words clicked quickly from there with birth, quality and remote.
I still wasn't sure between the last two but lodge, plant, stick and wedge seemed the safer bet, which was correct. Though I was still in a buildings mindset as I considered lodge and plant.
Thus, I ended yesterday with the blue category of hotel, house, deed and token for things in a Monopoly box. I'm not sure I would have ever organically gotten there. An infamous story in my family is the time I decided I was done with that terrible game and just "retired" in the middle by selling off all my properties and items and then moving my token to the middle of the board. I recommend it.
