NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, August 26 (#442)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 26 for puzzle #442 are a bit more difficult than yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 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, #441, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #442. 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 : Official sanctioning
• 🟩 Green : Torus-shaped things
• 🟦 Blue : Hook, shank, slice, whiff
• 🟪 Purple : Footwear minus "er" sound

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: Don't (or should I say donut ) forget to look at your feet when you line up a shot, and make sure everything is by the book.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #442?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Official sanctioning: Blessing, approval, consent, support
• 🟩 Torus-shaped things: Bagel, lifesaver, tire, wreath
• 🟦 Bad golf shots: Hook, shank, slice, whiff
• 🟪 Footwear minus "er" sound: Loaf, slip, sneak, wade

The green category came first for me today, and it taught me a new word once it was revealed: torus. That's the fancy scientific name for donut-shaped, which is what I had in mind when I connected Bagel, Lifesaver, Tire, and Wreath.

Next came the yellow category. I saw Blessing first and started looking for other words related to religion, and when I found none, that's when Approval and Support started popping out to me. Once I spotted Consent, I realized all four had to do with sanctioning.

I stumbled into solving blue. I tried to link Slice and Loaf together as things dealing with bread, but when that failed I tried words that sounded like an action verb of swinging something: Hook, Shank, Slice, and Whiff. That that "something" would be a golf club totally went over my head. But I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day.

That made purple a rote fill, which worked out well for me because I never get the categories that have to do with homophones or missing letters/sounds. And today's was particularly tricky.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #441, which had a difficulty rating of 2.6 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I kicked off yesterday's puzzle with the yellow category, but not after striking out once on the blue one. Once I realized Heating had nothing to do with Boiling or Fuming, I started thinking maybe I shouldn't be taking some of these clues so literally. Once I started brainstorming some of the other hyperbolic words we use to describe anger, Livid and Steaming popped out.

Next came the blue category, which was easy now that I knew Heating was the outlier from all these red-hot clues. Though I did have a brain fart and briefly forgot Air was part of the HVAC acronym (with the other letters standing for Conditioning and Ventilation).

After that came the purple category. I got Baking, Laundry, and Origami fairly quickly, but struggled for the fourth for a while until I remembered folding had a less literal meaning in Poker.

Green became a rote fill after that.