NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, August 19 (#435)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 19 for puzzle #435 are slightly easier than yesterday’s answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 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, #434, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #435. 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: Music genres
• 🟩 Green: Bratwurst go-withs
• 🟦 Blue: Yoga poses
• 🟪 Purple: Starting with Pixar movies

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: Don’t tie yourself in knots over today’s puzzle. Instead, put on some tunes, get some snacks, and throw on one of the movies you loved to watch growing up. 

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #435?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Music genres: Blues, country, folk, rock
• 🟩 Bratwursts go-withs: Brat, bun, mustard, sauerkraut
• 🟦 Yoga poses: Chair, mountain, tree, warrior
• 🟪 Starting with Pixar movies: Coconut, soulmate, updo, wallet

After getting stumped by yesterday’s puzzle, I was happy to have an easier time today. The yellow category came first without too much of a sweat. Blues is hard to mistake for anything other than the music genre, and once I started trying to sniff out other genres, County, Folk, and Rock quickly popped out. 

I went to a family BBQ yesterday and must have still had hotdogs and hamburgers on the brain, because green came next with Brat, Bun, Mustard, and Sauerkraut. 

I fumbled around for a bit after that but managed to stumble into being one wrong answer away from correctly guessing another category. I’d heard of Mountain and Warrior poses in yoga before, and I vaguely remember Chair from a yoga class a friend dragged me to years ago. But I didn’t realize Tree was also one; the more ya know!

The purple category became a rote fill after that. I really should have been able to guess the connection given that yesterday’s same category was tied to another animated movie, Snow White, but that still wasn’t enough to clue me in. 

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #434, which had a difficulty rating of 3.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I can see why yesterday’s puzzle had such a difficult spike. That purple category is downright diabolical. 

Only the green category came easily to me this time. What If and Suppose are close enough that they immediately stood out, followed by Perhaps and Say once I brainstormed common ways we phrase questions. 

Next came the yellow category, but by then I’d already screwed up once. I thought Nerd, Runt, Grump and Dope might be connected because they can all be used as insults. When I struck out with that line of thinking, I wondered what else could Time Set be if not something to do with an alarm clock, and so Alarm, Hour, and Snooze fell into place. 

The blue category was a tricky one, with Kiss, Nerd, Runt, and Whopper all referring to candy pieces, and not playground insults or Burger King burgers, as I mistakenly thought. 

I was all out of guesses before I could solve the purple category. Dope, Grump, and Sleep now seem obvious even if they weren’t immediately, but I don’t think I ever would have put Do (as in, the name Doc minus the “c”) together with them on my own. You win this time, Connections Crew.