Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Saturday, July 20, #405

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 20 for puzzle #405 take a slight decrease in difficulty compared to 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, #404, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #405. 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 : Effortless
• 🟩 Green : Exertion
• 🟦 Blue : Energy for an electronic device
• 🟪 Purple : What "pop" might mean

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: Make it look easy doing something hard while making sure your tools are will work as you give things a bit of oomph.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #404?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Effortless: Fluid, graceful, natural, smooth
• 🟩 Exertion: Effort, labor, sweat, work
• 🟦 Energy for an electronic device: Battery, charge, juice, power
• 🟪 What "pop" might mean: Burst, dad, mainstream, soda

I suppose the trap in today's puzzle is juice, soda, sweat and fluid or maybe that's just me.

This did lead me to finding the blue category with battery, charge, juice and power when I came to my senses and did not actually enter that previous miscategorization.

I stuck with sweat form there. My grid shifted such that labor and sweat were neighbors. The connection stood out and it was short work finding effort and work.

Again the way the grid shift, I could have flipped a coin as to which category I finished first. Fluid, graceful, natural and smooth formed a nice little square on the left side of the grid, so working left to right I knocked out the yellow category pretty effortlessly.

I've said it before but having the purple category be fun, puts a smile on my face in the morning. This was one was cut with burst, dad, maintstream and soda. I don't know that I agree that pop means mainstream but I understand what they were going for.

Enjoy the weekend, hopefully today's puzzle put you in a nice mood to start the day.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #404, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I literally filled up my car yesterday and maybe that was on the mind, but I got the blue category right away. Diesel, plus, premium and regular are all tiers of gas that you can get gouged for at the pump.

The yellow category took longer than it should have, but I blame the word "steady" for this. I had flame, lover, and sweetheart and couldn't see any other connections for those words to try and shift my focus. I don't think anyone has ever said, "This person is my steady." You "go steady". It doesn't work, and I wish they had found another word like beau or or boo.

From there I found all the insulting words. Burn, dig and jab jumped out right away. Slight is correct here but it feels too passive compared to the other three. Again, another word would have been more fun. I would have taken slam or roast, as examples.

A personal goal of mine is to try and get the purple category before the end of the grid. So it was disappointing personally that I didn't do that, but today's purple category is a fun one with words followed by table. Pool, water, periodic and coffee. Sometimes you just don't see it but it was a neat little reveal when I wrapped the puzzle up.