NYT Connections today hints and answers — Thursday, August 8 (#424)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 8 for puzzle #424 drops way down in difficulty after yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 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, #423, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #424. 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 : Splashy ways to enter a pool
• 🟩 Green : Reiterate
• 🟦 Blue : Mainstay
• 🟪 Purple : _____ Radio

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: I say start hard with this one and figure out radio connections. After that, take a dip and then repeat before considering mainstays.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #424?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Splashy ways to enter a pool: Backflip, bellyflop, cannonball, jackknife
• 🟩 Reiterate: Echo, parrot, quote, repeat
• 🟦 Mainstay: Anchor, backbone, cornerstone, pillar
• 🟪 ____ Radio: Ham, pirate, satellite, talk

After the leap in difficulty yesterday, it was a surprise to fall back down to easy territory with today's grid.

I managed to hit purple early today when I saw ham and immediately thought "radio". It was a fun little hunt to find pirate, satellite, and talk.

I found green next with echo, parrot, quote and repeat, which relates nicely to the radio category.

The easiest 3 colors could be flipped as they are all, I think, pretty much the same level of difficult.

After getting green, the goal was to get them in reverse order but I snagged the yellow category first. It's a fun one with backflip, bellyflop, cannonball and jacknife for ways to jump into a pool.

Blue was the rote fill today with anchor, backbone, cornerstone and pillar. It held up the rest of Connections for today.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #423, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I managed to go down the line with today's puzzle which is always satisfying when it happens. More often than not I am surprised at what the NYT Games crew consider a green or blue category compared to others.

Yellow was an easy spot with jam, pack, ram and stuff. I think ram is a tricky word here as I don't think most people will consider it as a word that means to cram.

Green was pretty easy after that with cook, dishwasher, host, and server. I will say that I fell for the computer trap as I tried to make server, byte, server and host work. It did not.

I had been minding the electromagnetic spectrum from the beginning, but wasn't considering visible until I got to the last eight words. It became obvious that visible fit better with microwave, radio and x-ray than the last four.

Purple makes sense and feels like one you should get far earlier with bridle, byte, comedian and drill. Which I think is a mark of a good purple when the answers provoke the feeling that you should've known.