Today's NYT Connections: Hints To Help Solve Today's Game, June 4, 2024

This week in Connections started on a fairly tough note. The last two puzzles had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, which in steak terms would be medium well. Today's game isn't cooked any rarer, but we're here to make sure you get it well done. Okay, enough steak jokes; let's get into the meat of the matter.

If you're new to the game, Connections is all about figuring out and grouping words that share something in common. Your goal is to sort 16 words into four groups of four by finding the common threads, all without making more than four mistakes. The New York Times' game editors spice things up by throwing in red herrings, which are words that seem like they might belong to more than one category. The game becomes more challenging the more red herrings there are, and today's Connections has quite a few of them.

To make solving easier and keep the game fun, here's a guide to today's Connections game (Tuesday, June 4, 2024), which has a difficulty rating of 3.3. Scroll down slowly for the subtlest of hints that'll help you arrive at the answers yourself, or if you're at breaking point, jump to the end to see the solutions. We don't judge.

Connections is free to play on The New York Times' website, unlike some of the other games like Crossword and Spelling Bee, which require a subscription. You also don't need to log in, but this means there are no records of stats for previous games, and any streaks you achieve are not documented. For bragging rights, you can just share your results on social media.

Group four words on the board into one by working out what they share in common. Categories typically involve trivia, pop culture references, or fill-in-the-blank phrases. Each group is color-coded according to its difficulty level. The yellow group is the easiest and most obvious connection, green and blue are medium, and purple is the trickiest of the bunch. Technically, you only need to figure out three groups — the fourth will naturally be left over after 12 words are eliminated. If you're finding it difficult to make a connection, you can shuffle the board to make it easier to spot one.

Click on four words and hit Submit to see if you've guessed a group correctly. If you're right, those words will be removed from the board and displayed in a color-coded bar above, along with the key to the category. You might get a message telling you that you're one word away from a connection if you've selected three correct words, but it's up to you to figure out which one to swap. If you're wrong, that counts as a mistake, and don't forget, the game is over if you make four of those. Now, let's make sure that doesn't happen.

Here are the 16 words on the grid for today's Connections #359:

• STAFF

• HAT

• MAKE

• BRIDGE

• HATCH

• NET

• ROBE

• SPAN

• CLEAR

• KEEL

• CLEF

• SECTION

• SUITE

• BEARD

• DECK

• EARN

These hints might help you sort them correctly:

1. Yellow group: Getting that green

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2. Green group: Dumbledore's drip

3. Blue group: All aboard

4. Purple group: Fill in the gap; 100 in Roman numerals

Don't take the bait for today's red herrings. SUITE has nothing to do with DECK, and there's no musical connection with BRIDGE and CLEF, either.

If you're still struggling, here's a full reveal of all four categories. They might help you spot connections you couldn't see before:

1. Yellow group: TAKE HOME, AS INCOME

2. Green group: PARTS OF A WIZARD COSTUME

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3. Blue group: FOUND ON A SHIP

4. Purple group: C-___

Still having trouble connecting the dots? See the section below for the answer reveal. If you'd rather not have the answers handed to you, this is the point where you stop scrolling, don your leotard, and continue the mental gymnastics — all the spoilers are ahead.

Here are the answers to today's Connections puzzle (#359):

1. Yellow group: Take home, as income (CLEAR, EARN, MAKE, NET)

2. Green group: Parts of a wizard costume (BEARD, HAT, ROBE, STAFF)

3. Blue group: Found on a ship (BRIDGE, DECK, HATCH, KEEL)

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4. Purple group: C-___ (CLEF, SECTION, SPAN, SUITE)

And there you have it! Today was our first perfect solve, and we owe it in part to the Connection Companion's clue-loaded header image. The ship in the illustration confirmed a guess that BRIDGE, DECK, and HATCH were all related, but it was a tie between SUITE and KEEL for the fourth member. Luckily, we chose correctly, and thus the blue group was sorted.

The yellow group came naturally, and it was after making the connection that the NET hint in the image became obvious. We solved the green without help as well, which left the purple group over, thankfully. Tricky category, that one. If you look closely, you'll also see the letter C hidden in the image as the anchor point of the reel to the ship. Very clever. In yesterday's puzzle, the purple group was a fill-in-the-blank situation with the letter B. Today's is a C, which is quite the coincidence. Maybe tomorrow's purple category would be the same thing with the letter D –, although that might be a little too on-the-nose for NYT.

Anyhow, we hope you arrived at the answers without too many mistakes. We put these guides up every day, so you can check back in whenever you're stuck. If you're still playing the NYT's other popular game, Wordle, you should check out this list of the best Wordle starter words to help you solve the puzzles more easily, or five games like Wordle you can check out.