Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on August 31 for puzzle #447 takes a significant drop in difficulty compared to yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.9 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, #446, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #447. 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: Newspaper sections
- 🟩 Green: Tree features
- 🟦 Blue: Kinds of salad
- 🟪 Purple: Seen on backs of U.S. coins
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: Start with your veggies before looking at any loose change before recalling what makes up a tree before it gets turned into the local rag.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #447?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Newspaper sections: Arts, business, comics, sports
- 🟩 Tree features: Bark, crown, rings, roots
- 🟦 Kinds of salad: Chef, garden, Greek, wedge
- 🟪 Seen on backs of U.S. coins: Eagle, Monticello, shield, torch
Yesterday's 3.9 was one of the hardest puzzles in awhile but it was finishable. Today dropped down to 2.9 and I found myself struggling.
To start, we got salad types with Chef, garden, Greek and wedge, which feels like a yellow or green but was rated blue today.
I found the green category next with bark, crown, rings and roots which make up trees.
This opened up to the yellow category of newspaper sections with arts, business, comics and sports. Perhaps its embarrassing that I didn't see that having written for newspapers and regularly following industry. Ah well.
I spent much my time with this puzzle trying to figure Monticello and it just wasn't clicking why Thomas Jefferson's slave plantation was on here. Turns out its one of the symbols on the back of U.S. coins, adding eagle, shield and torch.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #446, which had a difficulty rating of 3.9 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Since I started putting together these Connections guides, I don't think I've seen a puzzle labeled 4 or 5 in difficulty. Today's 3.9 is the highest I've seen. Does it get there?
On difficulty Connections grids, snagging the yellow category first, as I did today, always feels bad because there isn't a category to fall back on if you're struggling. Anyway, yellow was shiny today with diamond, glitter, gold and sequin.
After finding the green category third, I actually though Blue was an easier find today. Though, I wasn't thinking of Wonders of the ancient world as I got gardens, lighthouse, pyramid and temple, though my thought train was structures of import. So, not that far off.
I took a couple of strikes here as I got stuck on cube, row and box and was trying to find a math connection.
A bit late for Olympics now, though the Paraolympics did just start, but I was stuck looking at box and just starting adding -ing to words which got me to Dive (ing), Fence (ing) and Row (ing). It actually felt harder than the blue category which isn't usually the case.
The purple row felt surprisingly obvious once I uncovered it with (ice) cream, (ice) cube, (ice) machine and (ice) storm. Honestly, it felt like I should have gotten that one earlier instead of mucking my way through the green category.
I'm not sure if this 3.9 felt more difficult than other puzzles we've had in Connections but it did make me pause for a bit. I do wonder what an eventual 4 or 5 difficulty would look like though.
