Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Sunday, June 30, #385

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on June 30 for puzzle #385 are slightly more difficult than yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.7 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, #384, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #385. 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 : Old saying
• 🟩 Green : Grill fuel sources
• 🟦 Blue : Trees
• 🟪 Purple : Hot tub components

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 is all about the great outdoors. Think of summertime activities, family gatherings, backyard grilling, and you're sure to come up with a few nuggets of wisdom.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #385?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Old saying: Adage, chestnut, maxim, saw
• 🟩 Grill fuel sources: Charcoal, electric, gas, wood
• 🟦 Trees: Ash, cherry, ebony, gum
• 🟪 Hot tub components: Filter, heater, jet, pump

The easiest category for today's puzzle threw me the most. I got tricked up by Chestnut among the other tree-related words for Blue. Add that with the fact that I've never heard Saw used in the context of an old saying, and I was properly stumped at first. Thankfully I took a gamble with Adage and Maxim that paid off and got me back on track.

Green had another red herring with Wood. But I was smarter this time around, with all the summer BBQs I've been going to making it easy enough to connect the dots between Charcoal, Electric, and Gas and see right through the Connections crew's trap.

The previous two categories already got me thinking about trees, so Blue came together next. Purple became a rote fill after that, which was lucky for me because I'll be honest I don't know a thing about hot tubs.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #384, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

Two days ago, I expressed hope that today's puzzle would be little more fun, and the Connections crew went got a little tricky on me.

Should I have fallen for the obvious Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun days of the week trap that they set? No, but I did, thus strike one.

Once that was out of the way, I started with Wed to see what connected from there. I saw unite and couple soon after. After that it was finding tie to complete the green category.

I don't know why I saw the Blue category next. Laid, placed and put were quick grabs. Sat came soon after, but I was really looking for set, like "Set yourself down right there."

The yellow homophones were immediately easy to spot after that with to, too, Tue and two.

Purple was a fun connection with May Flower, Sunflower, wallflower and wild flower. I liked that grouping and wish I had seen it earlier.