Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on July 31 for puzzle #416 take a huge leap in difficulty over yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.6 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, #415, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #416. 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: Raspy
- 🟩 Green: Fingers
- 🟦 Blue: Ale styles
- 🟪 Purple: French _____
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: How would you describe a smoky voice while considering the appendages on your hand as you sip a cold beer and enjoy more French things.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #416?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Raspy: Gruff, hoarse, husky, rough
- 🟩 Fingers: Little, middle, pointer, ring
- 🟦 Ale styles: Amber, porter, sour, stout
- 🟪 French _____: Bulldog, fry, horn, kiss
This game features an obvious trap in dog breeds; husky, bulldog, and pointer. And I spent more time than I care to admit racking my brain to see if there was a breed I couldn't remember.
After that, I had the blue category down pat with amber, porter, sour and stout. I am an ale enthusiast and very amateur brewer, so it was fun knocking this category out.
I knocked out the yellow and green categories almost simultaneously. After finally forgoing my dog category for raspy voices in gruff, hoarse, husky and rough. Fingers seemed to pop up as I was putting in the yellow words so it was quick to hit little, middle, pointer and ring. I was somewhat surprised that it was green and considered harder than the yellow. I wonder if swapping one of those out for index would have made it easier or not.
Purple was a rote fill today but a fun little category. Perhaps if I hadn't spent so much time hitting the fake dog category I would have seen it earlier but it was still pleasant to see it pop up.
That all said, I'm not sure why this one was weighted so much more difficult than yesterday's. Perhaps not knowing beer types would trip you up a bit.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #415, which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
It is rare that a Connections puzzle has a clue line up, which is partly why I think today's grid is rated so easy.
The yellow category can be found in a diagonal row from the first corner word down to the last bottom corner. So, finding neat, nifty, super and swell was quick.
I did get caught by the facility trap when putting together the purple category of block, complex, compound and development. I skipped block in favor of facility, which I think could also be described as a group of buildings.
As we do here, providing more details with elaborate, expand, explain and specify was a quick spot once the grid settles.
Finally, I got to the rote fill of words that mean talent with facility, flair, gift and knack. Something of a repeat considering they did a similar category last week but swapped out facility for faculty. If I recall correctly, gift and flair were also in that one.
