NYT Connections today hints and answers — Sunday, September 8 (#455)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 8 for puzzle #455 are a smidge easier 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, #454, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #455. 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 : Verbs in a cake recipe
• 🟩 Green : What a heart can do when excited
• 🟦 Blue : Ecclesiastical titles
• 🟪 Purple : ____ boys

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: We've made it to the weekend, which means it's the perfect time to get the blood pumping, cook up some good eats, and hang out with the boys.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #455?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Verbs in a cake recipe: Bake, preheat, frost, beat
• 🟩 What a heart does when excited: Pound, pump, race, throb
• 🟦 Ecclesiastical titles: Bishop, pastor, pope, prior
• 🟪 ____ boys: Bad, beach, hardy, pet shop

I've been trying to get more into cooking lately, so it's little wonder I solved the yellow category first today. Though I was confused for a bit because Bake and Preheat jumped out to me first, so I was initially scanning for other oven settings. Once that was a dead end, I widened my search for general cooking terms, and thankfully only two, Frost and Beat, were likely contenders.

Next came the blue category. I got Bishop, Pastor, and Pope easily, but the fourth one had me sweating until I remembered Prior has multiple meanings.

I was on a roll today with all correct guesses on the first try. For the green category, I picked out Pump, Race, Throb, and Pound as all verbs to do with working out, which is close enough to the actual category that I'm counting it as a win.

Purple was a rote fill, though I couldn't figure out the category until it was revealed. Honestly, I don't think I would have gotten it anyway. Bad Boys and Beach Boys I know, and with the Hardy Boys I've heard enough older relatives and coworkers reference that for it to at least sound familiar, but I had to look up who the hell the Pet Shop Boys were. Which I'm sure is going to upset some readers out there. Sorry, y'all, I was a '90s kid. That was before my time.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #454, which had a difficulty rating of 3.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

Perhaps I'm in a weekend sort of mind as I saw the green category first with Ball, Driver, Glove and Tee. An early weekend is the best time for a round, especially before a hot day is in the offing.

I don't think I knew that the Godiva logo had a horse in it. Fortunately, my guess at the purple category was brand names with Mustang, Polo, Coach and the chocolatier's.

Strangely, whenever I get down to yellow being one of the last categories, I always start overthinking what the easiest row should be. I took a couple of strikes putting this photoshop category together as I had Filter in the main instead of Scale with Crop, Flip and Rotate.

The blue category was nice with aquarium equipment in Filter, Pump, Rocks, and Tank.