Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 12 for puzzle #397 take a bit of a step up compared to yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 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, #396, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #397. 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: School facilities
- 🟩 Green: Roulette Bets
- 🟦 Blue: Associated with "Dove"
- 🟪 Purple: _____ Goose
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: Rooms in a school, various words with goose, Las Vegas my man, and a hotel stay, that's what the doves made me think of.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #397?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 School facilities: Auditorium, gym, lab, library
- 🟩 Roulette bets: Black, even, odd, red
- 🟦 Associated with "dove": Chocolate, peace, pigeon, soap
- 🟪 ____ Goose: Golden, grey, mother, silly
This is the second day in the row that the Connections grid has featured a yellow category about school. Good sir or madam, it is July, why are we even putting the word school near anything?!
July is about the lazy heat of summer, grilling, days on a beach, turning forty fans on in your bedroom so you can sleep. Not school. I am a minute or two out of school but lets leave school for August and September.
Anyway, I got the yellow category first because I saw Auditorium first and was immediately looking for other rooms; gym, lab, and library.
As soon as I wrapped up yellow, I immediately saw Golden and the first thought in my head was "Goose". Finding grey, mother and silly was a nice little hunt.
Red and black leapt out to me and I had Vegas on the mind before I saw odd and even. It worked. T'would be a nice start to an Alice in Wonderland set as well.
Seeing the title of the blue category, I understood, but was a bit miffed with "pigeon" since doves and pigeons are relatively the same species of bird. Still, it's a cute category and a nice wrap up after all those school shenanigans.
If they managed to squeeze a school category into Saturday's puzzle I will be quite disappointed.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #396, which had a difficulty rating of 2.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
If I hadn't just done this puzzle again before writing this, I would have forgotten about this puzzle. It just slides off the mind.
Strangely, because of that, I had a difficult time, or rather a slow time. I would get three words into a category and just stop for a moment before the fourth word became clear.
With that in mind, the yellow category jumped out first with the school supplies motif. Of course, I was looking at my work desk and saw all four items; pen, ruler, scissors, and tape, within reach.
I actually got the purple category next. My mental connection was just adding the words sign after each word. I didn't consider that they all light up. But applause, exit, recording and walk all worked.
The blue category jumped out next, with transferring things between people; give, hand, pass, and send.
Green became rote I could see others grabbing it early. All four words mean base; essential, key, principal and staple. The last two words could be a trap if you make the school connection. I forgot but I did get a strike because I picked staple over tape, but it was an easy mistake to fix after that.
