NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, September 30 (#477)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 30 for puzzle #477 are significantly easier than yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 3.7 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, #476, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #477. 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: Cook with heat and water
• 🟩 Green: Common perfume ingredients
• 🟦 Blue: Characters with pet dogs
• 🟪 Purple: Capital city 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: Today’s puzzle should send you globetrotting, thinking of dishes, smells, cartoons, and cities around the world. 

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #477?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Cook with heat and water: Blanch, boil, poach, steam
• 🟩 Common perfume ingredients: Ambergris, musk, rose, vanilla
• 🟦 Characters with pet dogs: Charlie, dorothy, shaggy, wallace
• 🟪 Capital city homophones: Keto, roam, sophia, soul

Today’s puzzle came together easily enough. Starting off with the yellow category, I saw Poach first and thought it might have to do with different ways to make eggs, but once I saw Blanch, Boil, and Steam, I realized the Connections Crew were casting a wider night than that. 

Next came the green category, where once I dug into what I remembered from high school English class about what Ambergris was, it was easy to make the connection to the other scented clues like Musk, Rose, and Vanilla. 

The only famous Wallace that came immediately to mind was the one of Wallace and Gromit fame, but for some reason, my brain immediately went to “famous duos” rather than the more obvious “characters with dogs.” Shaggy was an obvious pick, but it took me a second to realize I was barking up the wrong tree before I swooped up Dorothy and Charlie. 

Last came the purple category as today’s rote fill. I always slip up on the wordplay categories, and today’s was no different. 

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #476, which had a difficulty rating of 4.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Yesterday’s difficulty level of 4.5 started things off on an intimidating note, but I managed to get the green category right away with blanket, sham, sheet, and throw. 

Next came the purple category, which saw me riding high. At first, I thought honor and justice might be related, but with no other clues pointing to positions on the court, my news junky senses kicked in and picked out energy, labor, and state as other federal departments alongside justice. 

After that was yellow, the easiest category, with fulfill, honor, keep, and uphold. 

With only blue left as the rote fill, I was still able to guess the connection with all the clues being related to card games. Now that I’ve breezed through one of the toughest puzzles we’ve ever seen, it’s gonna be real embarrassing when I inevitably strike out on the easier ones.