Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 9 for puzzle #578 is much easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 out of 5.
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.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #577, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #578. 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.
Today's Connections words are: Shining, Finance, Table, Sit, Stand, Stay, To, It, Sea, Stall, Come, From, Legal, Heel, Booth, and Sales.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Vendor's spot at a market
- 🟩 Green: Dog commands
- 🟦 Blue: Corporate departments
- 🟪 Purple: Last Words in "America the Beautiful"
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: Take your dog to the farmer's market on a day away from corporate and, I guess sing America the Beautiful.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #578?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Vendor's spot at a market: Booth, stall, stand, table
- 🟩 Dog commands: Come, heel, sit, stay
- 🟦 Corporate departments: Finance, IT, Legal, Sales
- 🟪 Last words in "America the Beautiful": From, Sea, Shining, To
There was a puzzle a couple weeks ago where the first row of clues was lions, tigers, bears, oh my. It was so obvious I skipped that grouping until the very end. And it turned out to be the yellow category.
Similarly, today, I saw Sea and Shining and From and immediately thought of the song. However, I didn't think it was real, again, and skipped over it. We'll come back to that.
From there I saw Finance and Legal. Sales was a quick find though it took a moment to see I.T.
Come, heel, sit and stay jumped out next as dog commands.
For some reason, I was still distrustful of the purple category so we grabbed yellow next with booth, stall, stand and table.
Which left the obvious, to me, From sea to shining sea. Sometimes you need to try your really obvious guesses. They're probably right. What's a strike anyway?
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Section: Branch, division, limb, wing
- 🟩 Accessories for playing an instrument: Bow, drumstick, mallet, pick
- 🟦 Distinctive Features of an elephant: Ear, memory, trunk, tusk
- 🟪 Words misspelled in nu metal band names: Biscuit, Corn, Lincoln, Stained
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #577, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I'm not entirely sure what it says about the music I listened to in middle school but I saw Biscuit and my first thought was Limp Bizkit. I saw corn (Korn) from there and was off to the races. Stained (Stained) stuck out to me though I've never though of them as a nu metal band. It took a second to find Lincoln (Linkin Park) but we got there. The new album with the new singer is great by the way.
I was still thinking music and picked up the green category next when I saw pick and mallet. Bow and drumstick rounded out the list.
Trunk and tusk stuck out to me as elephant bits. I had ear and took a poor strike grabbing limb...instead of memory. An elephant never forgets but I did.
Today, we wrapped up the puzzle wit the yellow grouping of branch, division, limb, and wing.
