From Mashable · Mashable Team · · 1m 20s
NYT Connections hints and answers for Sept. 16
Today’s Connections puzzle leans on metals, coins, poets and sausage wordplay.
In brief
Today’s Connections puzzle leans on metals, coins, poets and sausage wordplay. The cleanest path is to spot the category mechanics first, then test each four-word set before locking it in. Originally reported by Mashable.
A science-friendly puzzle
Mashable frames today’s Connections as manageable, especially for players who notice chemistry clues. The daily word game asks players to group 16 words into four hidden sets.
“The game is all about finding the "common threads between words."”
How Connections works
Players sort 16 words into four groups of four. A correct group leaves the board, while a wrong guess counts as one of four allowed mistakes.
“there's only one correct answer”
Color tells difficulty
The four sets are ranked by color. Yellow is easiest, then green, blue and purple, and players can shuffle the board to spot links faster.
“yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple”
Today’s category hints
The spoiler-light clues point to the periodic table, spare change, writers and meaty eats. Those hints narrow the thinking without naming the categories outright.
The real categories
The answer groups are words ending in metal elements, words starting with U.S. coins, poets’ middle names, and sausages plus one extra letter.
“Ending in metal elements”
Today’s full solution
The sets include LATIN, LONG JOHN SILVER, MARIGOLD and STEAM IRON for metals. The other groups use coin starts, poet middle names and altered sausage words.
The takeaway
The cleanest path is to spot the category mechanics first, then test each four-word set before locking it in.
