NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, September 23 (#470)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 23 for puzzle #470 are a bit tougher than yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 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, #469, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #470. 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: Not smooth, as terrain
  • 🟩 Green: Bit of land for growing
  • 🟦 Blue: Member of a cartoon duo
  • 🟪 Purple: ___ park

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:  Though the weather's getting colder, today's puzzle should make you think of the great outdoors along with some of your favorite cartoons and pastimes growing up. 

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #470?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Not smooth, as terrain: Bumpy, rough, rugged, uneven
  • 🟩 Bit of land for growing: Bed, parcel, patch, plot
  • 🟦 Member of a cartoon duo: Chip, rocky, scratchy, stitch
  • 🟪 ____park: Amusement, national, parallel, south

I breezed through the yellow category today first, which always means the heat is on to figure out the remaining more difficult categories. But unlike the clues for the the rest, yellow's answers today — Bumpy, Rough, Rugged, Uneven — were pretty straightforward. 

I stumbled a lot with the remaining categories because each one was packed with words with at least two or more meanings. Next came green with Bed, Parcel, Patch, and Plot, though by that point I'd already struck out once trying to connect Rocky and Scratchy with Patch. 

After that was the purple category. Parallel was the clear outlier for me, and I worked backward from there to realize that it along with South, Amusement, and National all had to deal with types of parks. 

Last was the blue category with Chip, Rocky, Scratchy, and Stitch. I recognized all but Scratchy as I was never much of a "Simpsons" fan.   

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #469, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I started off strong yesterday by solving the blue category right out of the gate. I saw Drawing first along with clues that ended up being connected through the yellow category (more on that in a sec) that reminded me of settings in Photoshop. But when I spotted Lottery, Pool, and Raffle I realized the Connections Crew meant a completely different kind of drawing. 

That set me up nicely to solve the yellow category, though, as I'd already connected Grayscale, Neutral, and Pastel. After searching around for a bit, I spotted Neon and realized they were all color palettes. 

The green category felt even easier than yellow yesterday. New, Open, Print, Save - all options we've used a million times on computers.

That left the purple category as yesterday's rote fill, which featured some clever wordplay on the different meanings of "bronze" with Alloy, Scultpure, Suntan, and Third.  

Alyse Stanley
News Editor

Alyse Stanley is a news editor at Tom’s Guide overseeing weekend coverage and writing about the latest in tech, gaming and entertainment. Prior to joining Tom’s Guide, Alyse worked as an editor for the Washington Post’s sunsetted video game section, Launcher. She previously led Gizmodo’s weekend news desk, where she covered breaking tech news — everything from the latest spec rumors and gadget launches to social media policy and cybersecurity threats.  She has also written game reviews and features as a freelance reporter for outlets like Polygon, Unwinnable, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. She’s a big fan of horror movies, cartoons, and miniature painting.