NYT Connections today hints and answers — Sunday, September 15 (#462)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 15 for puzzle #462 are significantly easier than 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, #461, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #462. 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: Reside
  • 🟩 Green: Decrease
  • 🟦 Blue: Doofus
  • 🟪 Purple: Member of a septet

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:  As the weekend winds down, don't be a dunce: be sure to relax and unwind wherever you are, and maybe think of a lucky number while you're at it. 

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #462?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Reside: Dwell, inhabit, stay, live
  • 🟩 Decrease: Decline, drop, dwindle, ebb
  • 🟦 Doofus: Clown, dweeb, sap, turkey
  • 🟪 Member of a septet: Dwarf, sea, sin, wonder

Unsurprisingly, the two easier categories were a breeze to solve today. I started with green, nabbing Decline, Drop, Dwindle, and Ebb pretty quickly since the latter especially don't really have any other meanings besides "decrease." 

Next came the yellow category, another easy fill with Dwell, Inhabit, Stay, and Live.

Blue was a little harder to wrap my head around, because while I singled out Clown, Dweeb, and Turkey fairly quickly, the fourth eluded me until I remember Sap was one half of "sad sap" and not just the the word for what comes out of a maple tree. 

That made purple a rode fill today, which worked out great since I'd never heard the word "septet" before. Even after looking it up, it took another second for the theme to click for me: Seven Dwarfs, seven Seas, seven Sins, seven Wonders of the world. 

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #461, which had a difficulty rating of 3.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

We went down the line yesterday. 

So, we started with yellow grabbing grape, winery, region and vintage. I took a strike because I threw California in first, but that's regional.

I went down a console path of super, pro, switch and retro which got a strike, and with hindsight was very wrong and a stretch on my part. It did lead me to seeing the green category with button, knob, slider and switch for console inputs.

Connections will tell you if you're close to a category and a reconsideration of pro, super and retro got me to see sub as prefixes to words.

Which made purple's Burger King, California King, Lion King and Prom King the easy fill. It's a fun category. 

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. Before 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 and has written game reviews and features for outlets like Polygon, Unwinnable, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. She’s a big fan of horror movies, cartoons, and roller skating.

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