NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, September 25 (#472)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on September 25 for puzzle #472 are the same difficulty as yesterday's answers, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 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, #471, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #472. 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: Trio of sports achievements
  • 🟩 Green: Needs for painting a room
  • 🟦 Blue: Food named after cities
  • 🟪 Purple: ____ Derby

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:  Get your treys in before painting your room and then get pick up a Philly Cheesesteak or London Broil before hitting up the local derby.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #472?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Trio of sports achievements: hat trick, threepeat, trifecta, triple crown
  • 🟩 Needs for painting a room: Drop cloth, paint, roller, tape
  • 🟦 Food named after cities: Broil, cheesesteak, sprouts, wings
  • 🟪 _____ Derby: Demolition, home run, Kentucky, soap box

I struggled yesterday, but despite being the same difficulty score, today was much easier.

We kicked it off with hat trick which quickly led me to other 3-based sporting achievements, threepeat, trifecta, triple crown. The threepeat is interesting because of the big 5 sports it hasn't really been done outside of the ongoing travesty that is Man City in the Premiere League. Yes, I'm a fan of another team in the Premiere, why do you ask?

Sticking with sports, I saw soap box and home run next to each other. I did take a couple of strikes trying to get roller derby in as a thing. But wised up and took Kentucky and demolition.

Which lead me to the green category of roller, drop cloth, paint and tape. 

We rounded it out with blue, which was fun with (London) Broil, (Philly) Cheesesteak, (Brussell) sprouts, and (Buffalo) wings in foods named after cities.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #471, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I found myself with one quibble on this one. 

I got started with the blue category when I saw balloon, banner, confetti and garland.  An early strike got me when I had streamer over garland. That strike made me pause, but I came back and swapped in garland since the the other three didn't fit elsewhere.

Streamer led me to the purple category where I added influencer, model and ambassador. Despite the word combo 'brand ambassador' existing, I quibble with ambassador in this list especially since it's functionally the same word as influencer and isn't an online personality in the same way. Model and streamer, people who can be influencers, are at least different. If you want to be tricky, I would have gone with something like poster or host, which could be reasonably placed elsewhere.

From there, I saw the green category with book, charter, reserve and secure. The simplest one so far.

Yellow was my last category. Creative, fresh, novel and original made sense. I saw those words, but don't know why I didn't connect them until the end here. I guess it's inspired, sure.

Scott Younker
West Coast Reporter

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him.