NYT Connections today hints and answers — Sunday, July 28 (#413)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 28 for puzzle #413 are a smidge more difficult than yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.7 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, #412, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #413. 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 : Parts of a book
• 🟩 Green : Cat coat patterns
• 🟦 Blue : Nervousness, in the singular
• 🟪 Purple : Starting with vegetables

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: Edgar Allen Poe would be a fan of today's puzzle. Or should I say Edgar Allen Potato .

And with that, I will see myself out.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #413?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Parts of a book: Cover, jacket, page, spine
• 🟩 Cat coat patterns: Calico, tabby, tortoiseshell, tuxedo
• 🟦 Nervousness in the singular: Butterfly, jitter, nerve, willy
• 🟪 Starting with vegetables: Beethoven, cornucopia, kaleidoscope, peacock

I was able to crack the green category first, mostly on one clue alone. I've only heard Tortoiseshell used to describe glasses and cats, and once I started down that line of thinking, it was easy to pick out the other types of feline friends I'd heard of. Isn't it funny how we have so many different names for dog breeds but when someone asks me what kind of cat I have it's just...orange. (Hence why his name is Cheeto.)

I thought Spine and Jitter or Nerve might be related at first, but Page was a big flag that we could be talking about books here (or pagers, I suppose, but that seemed less likely). So with that Jacket and Cover fell into place to round out the yellow category.

But my first line of thinking helped me figure out the blue category with all its synonyms for anxiety. Something I am all too familiar with.

The purple category had me stumped until the category name popped up. Really, Connections crew? Beet hoven? Pea cock? That's a dad joke if I ever heard one.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #412, which had a difficulty rating of 2.6 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I managed to find the green category first seeing generate, produce and yield. I was hoping for more animals with bear and fox, but alas. Speaking of bear, there is the phrase "bear fruit" which means to yield results. However, I don't think the word alone really lends it self to this definition. The only other thing I could think of was "bear a child", but that doesn't seem grammatically correct for this category.

For some reason when I put together aside, detour, digression and tangent I was quite surprised that they were for the yellow category. I legitimately thought I was putting the blue together. I do try to wipe the harder categories first and tend to try and save yellow unless I need to use it to clear the board and my mind a bit.

The real blue category was kind of fun with babe, fox, snack and ten. I enjoy slang categories.

I'll admit, my initial thought upon seeing the purple category title was that it was wrong. Radius, r, reverse, yep that's an R, right, yeah, an R as well. Despite knowing that R like "how r u?" exists, I didn't want to accept it. Ah well, sometimes you need to let the first thought go and see what comes second, or even third.