Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Wednesday, July 24, #409

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 24 for puzzle #409 continue the week's trend of answers getting slightly easier than the day before, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.4 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, #408, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #409. 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 : Joke around with
• 🟩 Green : Poultry cuts
• 🟦 Blue : Baby animals
• 🟪 Purple : Push through a crowd

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 full of traps, try solving the purple category first and focus on the yellow, it might help you suss out the traps as you go.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #409?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Joke around with: Kid, razz, rib, tease
• 🟩 Poultry cuts: Breast, tender, thigh, wing
• 🟦 Baby animals: Calf, cub, fawn, kit
• 🟪 Push through a crowd: Barge, jostle, muscle, shoulder

This week the trend has supposedly been that the puzzles get easier as the days go on. We started at 3.7 rating and today is allegedly a 2.4.

For an easier puzzle it is so full of traps that I spent the whole time wondering how it was rated so low in difficulty. I would not be surprised if many puzzlers fail today. I think if you don't knock out yellow or purple first and get caught up trying to fit things around the traps, it'll really get you tripped up.

The first trap that got me was around the blue category.

I had calf and kid right off, since those are the two starting words. I saw fawn soon after and cub. I was wrong. Kid works since it's what you call a baby goat, but they got me there. Kit was also available so I swapped the two to get the blue category.

The second trap for me was around body parts and chicken cuts. I was trying to shove shoulder, rib, breast and thigh into a category. It doesn't work. Strike two.

I saw the poultry cuts soon after and was able to clear that nasty bit.

The purple and yellow categories were easier to fill out after that. I actually liked the yellow category which is rare since they're usually quite obvious fills.

The purple category was also interesting but I was ready to be out of this one by the time I got to barge, jostle, shoulder and muscle.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #408, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

Days like today are when I have to consider what types of purple categories I like and dislike. I would say out of all the similar ones the "Word minus a letter" are my least favorite.

Despite, supposedly, being easier than yesterday's puzzle, today was a slog for me.

My first strike came while putting the yellow category together in that I tried to put charlatan together with hot dog, peacock and showboat instead of ham for the blue category. I think it works in general but it definitely fits better with fraud, quack and sham.

Here is where I ran into trouble. I could not for the life of me see the connections between the green words and the purple words. For far too long I had noise, sound and speed and was just willing another word to fit. Two strikes in a row say that I was forcing it.

It wasn't until I finally decided to just cross off words that didn't fit with anything at all that I was able to limit down noise, sound, peep, tweet and word.

I still don't think word works for the category of Utterance, but I get it and the trap is tweet.

Anyway, the purple category was left and despite loving the Looney Tunes, I found no joy in this category.

Some days you're mind is against you, or in my case, I stared blankly at the screen for far longer than I care to admit. It was empty.