NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, August 15 (#431)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 15 for puzzle #431 takes a big leap in difficulty 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, #430 in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #431. 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: Breadth
• 🟩 Green: Other half
• 🟦 Blue: Beers, familiarly
• 🟪 Purple: Words after “pay”

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: Perhaps consider some bad beers, while adding pay before some words and looking for your mate and considering the breadth of the project.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #430?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Breadth: Extent, range, reach, scope
• 🟩 Other half: Complement, match, mate, partner
• 🟦 Beers, familiarly: Bud, Natty, Sierra, Stella
• 🟪 Words after “pay”: Check, dirt, pal, phone

I’ll say that I took three strikes on this one but I think many will find this one easier than you think, despite the much higher difficulty rating.

Not sure what it says about me but I found the blue category first, spotting Sierra, Bud and Natty (which I think of more as Natty Ice) and then Stella.

I took my strikes here as I tried to put together the green category. I got stuck on Pal. 

Sometimes when you struggle, it’s best to pause on the category you’re working on try somewhere else. I did that and quickly found the yellow category.

That was extent, range, reach and scope. 

The purple category fell next as I ignored the green words I knew where correct. For me, the phrase ‘hitting pay dirt’ came to mind. It was an easy lift to find paycheck, pay pal and pay phone from there.

Finally, I had green with complement, match, mate and partner. 

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #430, which had a difficulty rating of 2.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Sometimes the traps feels more interesting than that answers.

I spent a minute looking for the Disney connection trying to piece Mickey, Daisy, Goof and maybe Jasmine or Buzz together. Clearly, it doesn’t work and I abandoned this before I took a strike. 

Goof did give me gaff, flub, and boo-boo for the yellow blunders. 

Sticking with Disney, I followed along with flowers for daisy, jasmine, petunia and poppy. 

Today I went down the line which is always satisfying and I saw pollinate, buzz and string as I was putting the flowers group together. Dance was a pleasant reminder that bees communicate with a series of “dances” to indicate where flowers are, other bees and predators. It’s cool.

I am no Yankees fan but I should have seen the Yankees legends coming. Got stuck on Disney. Meanwhile, Go Orioles! Who as of this writing lead the AL East over the Yankees (I realize its more of a tie at the moment, still.)