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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Scott Younker

Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Saturday, July 6, #390

NYT Connections.

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 6 for puzzle #391 has the exact same difficulty as yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.2 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, #390, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #391. 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: Biological building blocks
  • 🟩 Green: Purchases for a baby
  • 🟦 Blue: Objects played as instruments
  • 🟪 Purple: ____ Tag

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: Consider a childhood game and what can be used to play it as you ponder a backwoods music while building life whether through science or with a partner.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #391?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Biological building blocks: Atom, cell, molecule, protein
  • 🟩 Purchases for a baby: Bottle, crib, mobile, rattle
  • 🟦 Objects played as instruments: Jug, saw, spoons, washboard
  • 🟪 _____ Tag: Dog, freeze, phone, price

I recently had a baby with my wife, so the green category was immediate to me, because that is basically my life right now; crib, bottle, mobile, rattle.

It was only after I finished the category that I saw the smartphone trap that was laid in the puzzle. I suppose it's a good thing that I skipped right over that one, but it's one to look out for as you start this puzzle.

I did use the synonyms for mobile phone as launching points for other categories. This is how I got the yellow category starting with cell, then quickly nabbing atom, molecule and protein. 

Once you have the yellow and green category, I think it's a coinflip between which one might grab you first between blue and purple. The way the grid shifted, I had jug and spoons next to each other with washboard underneath. I right away saw the things as instruments connection.

Purple makes sense, and maybe if the grid had shifted differently, I might have seen that first. It does finish off the phone trap with dog, freeze, phone and price.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #390, which had a difficulty rating of 3.2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

To start, I hope those of you who celebrate the 4th of July had a relaxing day. I'm back on the clock but if you're not enjoy the long weekend.

Perhaps I'm sun-drunk from yesterday, but I legitimately thought the blue category was a trap when I saw the connection. Thus, I did it anyway. Fortunately, it worked and my enjoyment of James "Bond" saw me through M, Moneypenny and Q. 

I did get hit with the money trap as I saw Euro and Yen and tried to force a names for money connection. Strike one. But after I got that out of the system, I saw desire, yen and pine as the crossword-ese clues they truly are. Long was an easy find soon after.

While I was snagging the yellow category I was already into purple and looking for Pop music. Purple went down pretty quickly with euro-pop, K-Pop and Power Pop soon after. Now I just want to get a Pandora mix of all of these.

The green category made me question how the designer decides which color goes with which category. Green is supposed to be the next hardest group after the ease that is supposedly yellow.

Despite having read or glanced at the covers of all of these magazines; Fortune, Mad, Nature, O, I'm not certain I would have ever made the connection unless it was the final category to fill out. I suppose these are all titles that people have heard about.

Sometimes a grouping eludes you and today's green selection was one such case.

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