Hints and Answers for Today’s Connections on August 16, 2024 (Puzzle #431)

Nowadays Connections puzzle, there are many possible options and some more difficult than average words that make it difficult to determine which words go where. the editors apparently worked overtime to try to sneak in as many red herrings as possible could. Luckily, we have solved the puzzle and now we have several tips and tricks to make your time spent solving the puzzle more efficient.

If you are a fan of Connections, There are many more puzzles out there that you can try. One of them is the Summit NYT puzzle, which lets you make a different kind of connection. This a complete picture will be created is worth a thousand words and is worth a look for anyone interested in logical deduction puzzles.

Tips for Today’s Connections category

AUGUST 16 #431

If you’re stuck trying to figure out what the different categories might be, we have some tips to help you solve the puzzle without any spoilers. This puzzle also has some interesting red herrings and confusing words.

• A category is simply about being a common denominator
• One category will favor Americans
• One category is about what you put on your feet
• One category concerns movement

The last category (purple) is a bit strange today. The definition that has been made of it is not technically wrong, but I disagree. However, if you just need the category names, we have them listed below.

Answers to today’s connections

AUGUST 16 #431

Yellow Answers: Revealed and Explained

This category was, unsurprisingly, the easiest. OK is a bit of a red herring if you already figured out what the next category is, and SO-SO is confusing with all the other hyphenated words, creating a false category. However, seeing OK along with MEDIA told me it probably didn’t go with the other two-letter words. I figured this out pretty quickly, because I thought the hyphenated words were probably a trick on the editor’s part.

Green Answers: Revealed and Explained

For a short while, I thought the next category up was socks, as opposed to boots, so I thought there was a chance HI belonged in that category. However, this the category was actually a combination of two-letter wordsand it wasn’t a trick like I thought it might be. Anyway, I left those words for last and didn’t solve them until I figured out the others, because I didn’t want to waste my guess.

Blue Answers: Revealed and Explained

I solved this category second, even though I thought for a while it was about socks. Apparently, many boots and socks have similar names. COWBOY and GO-GO puzzled me for a while, but realizing that nothing else had anything remotely connected to feet, shoes or socks of any kind (except maybe Tide, as a detergent), it was then easier to deduce that they probably went together.

Purple Answers: Revealed and Explained

Even though I solved this puzzle and realized that all these words had something to do with orbit, I still have trouble with the wording of the category and the inclusion of SUN and TIDE. The SUN only appears to go up and down and doesn’t even appear to be on the same side every day when we look at it. And the TIDE goes in and out, not up and down. YO-YO and ELEVATOR have a lot in common and it should be in this category, but the wording should be slightly different. I insist.

Other games similar to Connections

Once you have questioned the notion of direction and what high and low is anyway, you can move on to a perhaps less existential game, like The Password Gameor another listed in the table below: