Today's puzzle is a sloppy commander in chief up on high.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 13 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,190. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,189, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
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.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Porridge
- Garfield
- Droopy
- Empty
- Heathcliff
- Excess
- Grant
- Slack
- Odie
- Paramount
- Sagging
- Madison
- Flaccid
- Kewpie
- Cleveland
- Doublespeak
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Doughy
- 🟩 Green: White House
- 🟦 Blue: Sounds like
- 🟪 Purple: Topography
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Lacking in firmness
- 🟩 Green: U.S. presidents
- 🟦 Blue: Words that sound like two letters
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in elevated landforms
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.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on September 13 for puzzle #1,190 are much harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Lacking in firmness: Droopy, flaccid, sagging, slack
- 🟩 U.S. Presidents: Cleveland, Garfield, Grant, Madison
- 🟦 Words that sound like two letters: Empty, excess, kewpie, odie
- 🟪 Ending in elevated landforms: Doublespeak, heathcliff, paramount, porridge
Today's puzzle was a tricky one, mostly because Garfield and Heathcliff had me on a wild goose hunt for cartoon cats. Once I realized that was a dead end, I started looking for something simpler, like synonyms for yellow. I came up with droopy, flaccid, sagging, and slack, a sentence that just sounds gross.
If we weren't talking about the orange lasagna-loving garfield, then odds are some White House residents were at play. Along with Garfield I scooped up Madison, Grant, and Cleveland for green.
Blue's category was particularly obtuse today, and I don't agree with the Connections Crew on all of the clues. Kewpie, odie, and empty, I'll give them those, but excess? What letter makes the sound "cess"?
That left purple as today's rote fill with doublespeak, heathcliff, paramount, and porridge.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Ways to personalize a car: Bumper sticker, fuzzy dice, hood ornament, vanity plate
- 🟩 People in an online forum: Lurker, poster, spammer, troll
- 🟦 Things that blink: Cursor, eyelids, smoke detector, turn signal
- 🟪 ____ Alert: Nerd, red, spoiler, weather
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,189 which had a difficulty rating of 1.5 out of 5.
My way into today's puzzle was red alert, which put me on to spoiler alert and weather alert. It took a moment to find nerd alert, but we got there.
The forum users were pretty obvious to me from there: troll, spammer, lurker and poster.
I spotted the car personalization, so I entered cursor, eyelids, smoke detector, and turn signal next to get the blinky things.
This left bumper sticker, fuzzy dice, hood ornament, and vanity plate.
