Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Tuesday, July 16, #401

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 156 for puzzle #401 are a smidge harder than yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.6 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, #400, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #401. 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 : In a bad mood
• 🟩 Green : Experimental
• 🟦 Blue : Starts of Broadway musicals
• 🟪 Purple : Peter _____

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: Don't start today's puzzle in a poor mood, get into a singing mood, and consider all of the forms that a Peter can take, though that might be to speculative.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #401?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 In a bad mood: Cross, short, surly, testy
• 🟩 Experimental: Exploratory, pilot, preliminary, trial
• 🟦 Starts of Broadway musicals: Fiddler, jersey, kinky, merrily
• 🟪 Peter _____: Pan, Parker, Piper, Rabbit

We've had a streak of snagging the purple category first here, and it should have continued today.

I actually had Pan, Parker and Rabbit and for some reason it would not click in my mind that Piper is a Peter. Especially since I spent many a birthday party at San Antonio's version of Chuck E. Cheese; Peter Piper Pizza. Apparently, there are a ton in Arizona, but my memory of that place is strictly from Texas. I ended up getting Purple last, despite this start.

So, yellow was actually my first category completed as I saw short and surly near each other. Testy and cross were easy finds from there.

The grid fell such that pilot, preliminary and trial were close to one another. It was simply looking for the connection to exploratory from there.

If I'm being honest, Broadway musicals are not my thing and I'm not sure I would have ever gotten this category if I didn't already have the purple category mostly locked down. I mostly picked this one together because it didn't fit with the 3 Peter's, though it took a strike to get there.

Not my best day, I hope you had a better cleaner one than me!

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #400, which had a difficulty rating of 2.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

For the second day in a row, I correctly guessed the purple category on the first try, so I'm feeling like a damn genius right now. If Liter and Pint were enough of a clue that this was about liquids, Fifth drove the connection home that these are the kind of drinks you have where everybody knows your name.

After that came yellow, which could have been much trickier if the Connections crew had thrown in a few more red herrings. Believe and Trust are similar enough to get you on the right track, and Accept and Buy are the only other clues even remotely synonymous.

I admittedly stumbled my way into solving the blue category. I got as far as connecting Bracket, Mount, and Stand, but for some reason, Base didn't click for me until the second or third try.

The clues Bluff and Show originally got me thinking about poker, which is probably why the green category was the last one solved today.