Today's puzzle is not about AC/DC, as much as I want it to be.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 10 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,187. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,186, 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
- Catio
- Alternating Current
- Lead
- Clothesline
- Atlantic City
- Represent
- Actinium
- Sextant
- Badlands
- Sulfur
- Thunder Road
- Flower Box
- Krypton
- Born to Run
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Periodic
- 🟩 Green: Jutting
- 🟦 Blue: Nebraska
- 🟪 Purple: Asap
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: Chemical elements
- 🟩 Green: What you might see sticking out of a window
- 🟦 Blue: Bruce Springsteen classics
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in synonyms for "happening now"
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 10 for puzzle #1,187 are significantly harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Chemical elements: Actinium, krypton, lead, sulfur
- 🟩 What you might see sticking out of a window: Air conditioner, catio, clothesline, flower box
- 🟦 Bruce Springsteen classics: Atlantic city, badlands, born to run, thunder road
- 🟪 Ending in synonyms for "happening now":
The somewhat obvious trap is the "AC" moniker, but as always with these kinds of trick groups, we know the individual words will be featured in each set.
With that in mind, catio made me think of things cats sit on, which is why I started with air conditioner, flower box and clothesline. Maybe I have weird cats, but in my life I have seen them sit on a clothesline, especially when a rug is involved.
I grabbed the chemicals next: actinium, krypton, lead and sulfur.
I'm not a Bruce Springsteen fan, and I wouldn't know his catalog outside of Born to Run. Honestly, I went into the blue set thinking of movie titles and somehow made it out fine here with Atlantic City, Badlands, Born to Run, and Thunder Road.
Anyway, that left the happening now set of purple with adult contemporary, alternating current, represent, and sextant.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Hard to understand: Bewildering, esoteric, incomprehensible, opaque
- 🟩 Words with "small" prefixes: Microbrewery, minivan, nanotechnology, picosecond
- 🟦 Horror movies: Arachnophobia, halloween, it, saw
- 🟪 Words before "force": Brute, electromagnetic, g, task
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,186, which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5.
Writing out today's puzzle in order is interesting as the words appear to go down by one letter from Incomprehensible to G. Let's see if that matters.
Because I saw the puzzle rating before starting, I automatically assumed the set of microbrewery, minivan, nanotechnology, and picosecond was actually a blue or purple set, so I was surprised that it was green.
To reset, I put the horror movies together: Halloween, It, Saw and Arachnophobia, which was the blue set. This was more surprising to me, if only because I am a fan of the horror genre, so I spotted those four immediately.
With the final 8, I finally saw the Force connection of brute, electromagnetic, G and task.
This left bewildering, esoteric, incomprehensible and opaque.
The descending order didn't seem to matter, but it was fun to spot.
