NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, July 29 (#414)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 29 for puzzle #414 are more difficult than yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 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, #413, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #414. 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 : Stadiums
• 🟩 Green : Street suffixes
• 🟦 Blue : Associated with scales
• 🟪 Purple : Things with spouts

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 has a lot to do with things that begin with the letter "S." That includes the obvious one, sports (get it, because of the Olympics?), but be sure to weigh all your options before sticking to any one road.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #414?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Stadiums: Arena, bowl, coliseum, dome
• 🟩 Street suffixes: Alley, court, drive, lane
• 🟦 Associated with scales: Fish, justice, libra, solfege
• 🟪 Things with spouts: Fountain, gutter, teapot, whale

With the Olympics currently in full swing, today's yellow category was a snap. Coliseum and Arena were easy enough, and while I thought Court may fit in there somewhere too, once that was ruled out then Bowl and Dome were the only clear choices left.

The green category came next. Once I realized Alley, Court, and Drive had nothing to do with sports, I started heading on the right path.

The blue and purple categories stumped me today. Libra made me think of zodiac signs, but with fish being the only other possible contender for that category, that quickly went out the window. Complicating things further was the fact that I had no clue what a Solfege was. I can appreciate the double meaning for both though, it's really clever. Too clever for me, womp womp.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #413, which had a difficulty rating of 2.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

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.