Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Thursday, July 18, #403

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 18 for puzzle #403 take a big leap after a couple days of the same rating, 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, #402, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #403. 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 : Open space
• 🟩 Green : Boxing unit
• 🟦 Blue : Glitziness
• 🟪 Purple : Emoji

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: Take a punch, stroll through space, add a little spice and then send images like a boomer.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #403?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Buildings around town: Bank, laundromat, post office, supermarket
• 🟩 Hinder: Check, curb, hamper, inhibit
• 🟦 Animal group names: Pack, pride, school, swarm
• 🟪 Starts of U.S. Presidents: Bide, Cart, Nix, Washing

Surprisingly, today's puzzle, despite being rated far more difficult went fairly quick for me.

I found the yellow category first with plaza, square and court. I didn't see yard so I tried round first. Strike one for me. The mistake was fixed immediately. Though I thought round would have really fit nicely if they did this one again.

I wasn't thinking of boxing when I did the green category, though that makes sense in the context of the words. For me, those four words; bout, contest, match and round have all become common sports nomenclature. Still, it worked.

Did I take two strikes in a row trying to make fire and sparkles fit with dazzle, flash, pomp and ritz? Yes, yes I did. I still think sparkles was the more obvious choice (for a totally different category; perhaps, fireworks), but that's me being obstinate.

If you follow these blogs, no, the purple category did not induce irritation as yesterday's poorly thought out grouping did.

It's fine. I don't really use emojis beyond the occasional smiley face or thumbs up to acknowledge something quickly. Sometimes the purple category just needs to be eliminated by process and today is one of those days.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #402, which had a difficulty rating of 2.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I don't believe I've been more annoyed at a rote fill than I have with today's purple category. We'll come back to this.

I legitimately thought that today's yellow category was a trap. One of the real traps is the tease of 'laundry' with laundromat, hamper, cart and washing. It doesn't work of course. Instead, laundromat is just a place alongside the bank, post office and supermarket. It reminds that I have several out of the house errands to run.

I was working through the laundry trap, so I moved on to hamper and was already looking to combine it with curb and inhibit. Check was an easy find from there, though I debated putting in nix, but that's not a good synonym.

The blue category is fun with words for animals groups. Pack, pride, school and swarm are common ones that most people know. A personal favorite is a parliament of owls. Let me know if you have a favorite name for a group of animals, I love discovering new ones.

My annoyance with the purple category stems from the fact that it is mostly a category of trap words. You could see most of them in different wrong connections that you might make, except for Bide. When you do finally fill in the purple there is no consistency. It's not a group of Presidents who end with "on" or "er", for example.

It's a grab bag of nothing. The connection is that none of these words work with the other 3 existing categories. It sucks.

Fundamentally, I think a category needs to stand alone even if you are using portions of it to trick the puzzler. In this instance, I don't believe it stand alone and as mentioned, barely has a theme. You could still trap people but make it consistent.

Where do you stop the start of a name? Washing could have been Wash. If you need a word and not Nixo, you could have done Hard for Harding or even John for any of the Johnsons. Cool for Coolidge would have been a fun one. Look at that four letter answers to that category that is somewhat consistent and still has some trap elements with the other words in the grid.

I should not be this annoyed at one category but there you are, it was terrible.