NYT Connections today hints and answers — Tuesday, September 17 (#464)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 17 for puzzle #464 are a easier than 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, #463, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #464. 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 : Get excited with "up"
• 🟩 Green : Kinds of shoes
• 🟦 Blue: Legislative roles
• 🟪 Purple: Name homophones

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: Find the mate for your shoes, get pumped up, and then consider the leadership in Congress before considering how to grossly misspell some names.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #464?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Get excited, with "up": Amp, fire, hype, psych
• 🟩 Kinds of shoes: Flat, mule, pump slide
• 🟦 Legislative roles: Chair, leader, speaker, whip
• 🟪 Name homophones: Dug, matte, mic, peat

Today was as advertised, a bit easier than yesterday.

I started the grid off by seeing different shoes with pump and slide being the first two I grabbed. After that flat and mule were easy nabs for the green category.

From there we picked up the yellow category grabbing amp, hype and psych. I took a poor strike when I put whip in there first, but it was quick to switch over to fire for the yellow category.

I briefly forgot that whip was a position in the congressional settings but was able to put it together with chair, leader and speaker.

Purple was cute with Dug (Doug), Matte (Matt), Mic (Mike) and Peat (Pete). Sometimes purple can be tricky as various words could be used in other categories.

I briefly got caught up in putting mic, speaker and amp together, but there wasn't really another answer I felt confident in, for the best today.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #463, which had a difficulty rating of 3.2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I struck out first with a guess for "unconventional toppings on pizza" with all of today's food-related clues, but quickly recovered by knocking out the yellow category with Chief, Premier, Principal, Supreme. Of course, with the easiest connection out of the way, that always means the pressure is on for the rest of the categories.

Next was blue, which involved a bit of blind luck for me considering I've never heard Pap used in that context before and tried grouping it in with the others on a lark. Calling sentimental stories Cheese(y), Corn(y), Mush(y), I was familiar with, but Pap? Turns out it means "worthless or trivial reading matter or entertainment." What do y'know, you learn something new every day.

After that, I breezed through the green category (Cactus, Hedgehog, Mace, Pineapple), since the connection became clear with only eight clues left. Plus I saw the trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 over the weekend so the little rodents have been running around my mind.

Finally the purple category (Bottle, Graduate, Mushroom, Salary) had me stumped until the connection was revealed. I always fumble the wordplay categories, and this one was no different, but I do appreciate how clever the Connections Team gets with them.