Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 27 for puzzle #474 takes huge leap in difficulty compared to yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.6 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, #473, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #474. 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: Area of high ground
- 🟩 Green: Significance
- 🟦 Blue: Actions in fantasy sports
- 🟪 Purple: Sci-Fi movies with "The"
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: Get your popcorn going for a movie night while you scroll through your losing fantasy team before giving some deep thought to hills.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #474?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Area of high ground: Bank, dune, hill, mound
- 🟩 Significance: Gravity, import, substance, weight
- 🟦 Actions in fantasy sports: Bench, draft, start, trade
- 🟪 Sci-Fi movies with "The": Abyss, Fly, Matrix, Thing
Today's grid really makes me curious about how the weight of these puzzles are determined. Yesterday's 2.6 was a boondoggle for me, but I could see others breezing through it.
Today, I smashed it and even went backwards. So, does not knowing Sci-Fi movies make it a 3.6 or is the tricks-y words that could be in different categories together? I'm not sure.
I saw Matrix, Dune and Gravity right off the bat. Took a couple of strikes making it work but I knew Sci-Fi something was there. Seeing Thing and Fly clicked "The" and we were able to get The Abyss, The Fly, The Matrix and The Thing, all great movies.
I didn't take a strike but I was looking at bank, draft, and import and trade for a potential banking category. It didn't quite fit and felt forced. But then I noticed mound and was thinking baseball, which led me to bench and start next to each other, which led to trade and draft. Thus, fantasy sports. I was thinking regular sports, but we'll take it.
Then the green category fell into place with gravity, import, substance and weight.
Finally, we ended with an "area of high ground" in bank, dune, hill and mound.
No staring blankly at the grid today, which was a relief.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #473, which had a difficulty rating of 2.6 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Not going to lie, I stared at this grid for a long time before finding the answers.
I rarely use the shuffle feature, mostly because I don't always find it helpful. Today, it saved my bacon.
The shuffle dropped theory and bean next to each other. This got me to (String) Theory and (String) bean. Bikini was nearby and I had to hunt down cheese from there.
At one point in my staring, I had dry, neat and virgin and for some reason never saw straight. I found it this time and knocked down blue.
And then I stared again. Today was not clicking.
I took some strikes trying to put trim, fringe, wax and frill together before finally admitting to border, frill, fringe and trim.
Which left me with green's grow, mount, swell and wax. I got hit with a definition here forgetting that technically waxing does mean to grow or increase. Hence the waxing moon.
Some days the puzzle flows like spice in Dune. Today, it was banging the head against the wall waiting for my brain to make connections I couldn't see.
