NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, August 12 (#428)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 12 for puzzle #428 are slightly more difficult than yesterday’s answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 2.4 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, #427, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #428. 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: Metal elements
• 🟩 Green: Mattress sizes
• 🟦 Blue: Slang for toilet
• 🟪 Purple: Kinds of knives

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: Today’s puzzle takes a little tour around your average home, hitting up the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and…periodic table? 

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #428?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Metal elements: Gold, lead, mercury, tin
• 🟩 Mattress sizes: Full, king, queen, twin
• 🟦 Slang for toilet: Can, head, john, throne
• 🟪 Kinds of knives: Bowie, butcher, butter, butterfly

The Connections Crew really threw me with today’s clues. Bowie, Queen, and John got me thinking about my dad’s favorite musicians, but as it turns out they meant something a little closer to home. 

I got the yellow category first once I realized Mercury could mean the element and not Freddie Mercury. Gold and Lead were easy enough to sniff out after that, followed by Tin. 

Then came the green category. It finally hit me after I reshuffled the puzzle and Full and Twin appeared close together. King and Queen weren’t royalty, they were mattress sizes, of course! 

With my head screwed on more straight, I clocked Butcher as either the profession or the knife. Pulling at that thread, Butter and Butterfly started to make sense, and that’s when I finally remembered Bowie was more than a rockstar. 

Blue (Can, Head, John, and Throne) came after that as a rote fill, though I did successfully guess that category before the results were revealed. 

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #427, which had a difficulty rating of 2.0 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Yellow was a breeze for me yesterday. Having grown up near the largest Navy base in the world, I’ve heard just about every name there is for a boat, so Ship, Vessel, Craft, and Barge were easy enough to connect. 

After that came green. The Olympics going on in Paris right now had my mind on the gold, so Best and Champ stuck out. Legend came next, and then GOAT after I realized they meant the acronym for Great of All Time and not the four-legged variety. 

Then I went about solving the blue category. I thought I might be connected in some way to About and On. Maybe something with parts of speech? But on my second guess, I got it right once I folded in Concerning and Toward. 

Purple was a rote fill after that, and while I didn’t guess the category, I can appreciate the wordplay.