Today's NYT Connections hints and answers — Sunday, June 23, #378

NYT Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on June 23 for puzzle #378 are much more complicated than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.5 out of 5.

Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. 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, #377, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #378. 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: Settle down!
  • 🟩 Green: Minor Ailments
  • 🟦 Blue: What Humpback Whales Do
  • 🟪 Purple: ___ City Nicknames

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: Today's puzzle may take you back to childhood days of staying home from school sick and watching "The Price is Right." While you're at it, think back to the kinds of geography and biology lessons you learned in those days. Y'know, "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" type trivia.  

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #378?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Settle Down!: Easy, enough, quiet relax
  • 🟩 Minor Ailments: Bug, chill, cold, cough
  • 🟦 What Humpback Whales Do: Breach, dive, sing, spout
  • 🟪 ___ City Nicknames: Magic, motor, sin, windy

Maybe it's just because I'm based near Chicago, but I figured out the purple category almost immediately. Magic, motor, sin, and windy stand for the cities of Miami, Detroit, Las Vegas, and Chicago, respectively. Though I'll admit I had to look up exactly which Florida city held the magic title. 

The green category was a bit harder to grasp only because chill threw me for a loop. But once I saw cough and cold, the rest fell into place. 

As for the yellow category, I was a pain in my parents' behind enough times growing up to recognize those exasperated callouts: easy, enough, quiet, and relax. 

That made blue a quick fill, though I wouldn't have thought the category was so specific. I was thinking more along the lines of marine mammals, maybe whales, but nope: humpback whales. I'd argue that plenty of other whales also sing, spout, dive, and breach, but I admit I'm splitting hairs. Which, fun fact, is what their teeth are made of (keratin)!

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #377, which had a difficulty rating of 1.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Saturday's puzzle was a fun one packed with summer staples, from hitting the green to catching the ballgame and watching blockbusters. 

My colleague Scott spotted the purple category almost immediately, as brat, dog, frank and link all make for a summer good time.

Staying with the theme of outdoors made grabbing the green category a cinch with driver, iron, wedge and wood jumping out right away.

The yellow category was a bit trickier, only because the word series seemed an outlier compared to more closely related words like chain, train and string. 

Blue became a rote fill after that. Though with how quickly the other three categories fell into place, he didn't initially notice the horror movie theme connecting birds, fog, omen and ring.

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. Prior to joining 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, where she covered breaking tech news — everything from the latest spec rumors and gadget launches to social media policy and cybersecurity threats.  She has also written game reviews and features as a freelance reporter for outlets like Polygon, Unwinnable, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. She’s a big fan of horror movies, cartoons, and miniature painting.