NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, September 18 (#465)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 18 for puzzle #465 bump back up over 3 compared to yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.2 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, #464, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #465. 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 : Gathering spot outside a residence
• 🟩 Green : Lowdown
• 🟦 Blue: Kinds of reels
• 🟪 Purple: Cartoon dogs minus "Y"

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: If you're a cartoon fan remember your dogs before getting the tea. After that take a sit outside your house or send in a reel.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #465?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Gathering spot outside a residence: Deck, porch, stoop, yard
• 🟩 Lowdown: Dish, dope, info, scoop
• 🟦 Kinds of reels: Blooper, demo, highlight, sizzle
• 🟪 Cartoon dogs minus "Y": Droop, Goof, Lad, Snoop

Today was interesting, or at least I had fun with it.

We started the day with the yellow category as I saw stoop and porch right away. Deck and yard were easy to pick from there.

For a second, I wasn't trying to include blooper, but I did see highlight and sizzle. Nothing else really fit the category I was putting together which got me to blooper and demo for reels and the blue.

For the purple category which I got third I took a very silly strike. I realized that the category was cartoon dogs minus the letter Y. So, I had Goof(y), Snoop(y) and Droop(y) right away. However, for some insane reason I tried to put dope the group and in my mind I was picturing Droopy Dog even though I already hid him in the list.

After that moment, I dropped dope for Lad to get Lad(y).

The green category was obvious early on with info, dish and scoop, but I had never read the inside scoop definition of dope before. In my mind, dope means drugs (specifically weed), cool, stupid, or smeared as in covered (which I believe is an art thing).

Oxford also has "information about a subject," "treated with drugs," and "add an impurity to a semiconductor."

Always nice to learn a little something new.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #464, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

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.