NYT Connections today hints and answers — Thursday, August 22 (#438)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 22 for puzzle #438 drops down under three compared from yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 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, #437, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #438. 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 : Classic movie theater equipment
• 🟩 Green : Tier
• 🟦 Blue : Newspaper names
• 🟪 Purple : Prank verbs

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: Start hard with this one, by thinking of classic pranks and then try and recall some print newspapers, after that maybe bump to a movie theater and finish up with the rote tiers.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #438?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Classic movie theater equipment: Projector, reel, screen, speaker
• 🟩 Tier: Deck, floor, level, story
• 🟦 Newspaper names: Globe, mirror, post, sun
• 🟪 Prank verbs: Egg, moon, streak, toilet paper

I tell you what, this week if the difficulty is rated a 3 I'm all over the puzzle. If it's a two, I'm stuck staring blankly at the screen. It's not my week.

To be fair to myself, I was rushing and very distracted by a five-year-old with far too many questions for the time of day.

I managed to get the green category first with deck, floor, level and story. It's so boring I thought it was going to be the yellow.

I took a couple strikes trying to make Orbs happen with globe, sun, moon and egg. Beats me.

Somehow, that led me to accidentally snagging newspaper names with globe, mirror, post and sun. I don't know.

The yellow category finally came through with projector, reel, screen and speaker. I will say I spent most of today thinking of speaker as "orator" and not audio device.

Purple, while fun, was the rote fill with egg, moon, streak and toilet paper. Maybe it would have given it away but wish they had used TP instead toilet paper. Toilet paper as a verb sounds too formal.

Anyway, here's hoping Friday is a 3 so I can get back to it.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #437, which had a difficulty rating of 3.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

After slogging my way through yesterday's allegedly easier puzzle, today's "harder" puzzle was a nice reset.

I got things going by spotting the purple category first with fizz, punch, sling and sour. Though my mental connection was gin-based cocktails. The four listed are good with gin but can be made with other liquors.

Yellow was the next completion with cake, coat, plaster and smear. Not much to say there.

The air trap did get me as I took a strike putting balloon, floatie, basketball and bubble together. It was an easy swap to put tire down instead.

I am relatively chart free in my life but bar, line and pie made sense. I don't think I've ever consciously seen a bubble chart or knew that's what it was called. Always nice to learn something new.