NYT Connections puzzle hint and answer for Monday, September 4 (#85)

Welcome to your daily dose of NYT Connections help, every group freshly solved, typed up, and now ready and waiting to give you a hand. Get a tough game back on track or cut an early path through the word fog with our complete set of handy hints for today's Connections challenge, or if you need to save a struggling game you can take a cheeky little peek at every answer for the Monday September 1 puzzle. However you want to play, the solution that works for you is right here.

I ended up scratching my head at a few of today's Connections after a quick start, but a little creative thinking and a few pokes of the shuffle button eventually sorted that out. Hopefully you'll have no such trouble—especially as you've got today's hints to guide you.

NYT Connections hint today: Monday, September 4

Yellow: You're looking for artistic items here

Green: Think of terms you might use when driving an automatic car

Blue: Teeth are used for far more than chewing food

Purple: These might only make sense if you're sitting down 

NYT Connections answer today: Monday, September 4

Yellow: Brush, Canvas, Easel, Palette

Green: Drive, Neutral, Park, Reverse

Blue: Comb, Gear, Saw, Zipper

Purple: First, Folding, High, Lawn

More about New York Times's Connections

Connections is the NYT's latest popular puzzle game where you have to find the common thread that ties four seemingly unrelated words together. Can you find all four increasingly challenging groups of words before you make four mistakes? Don't forget: every day only has one solution even if some words look like they could belong to more than one group, and you can (and should) shuffle the grid as many times as you need to. It can help jog your brain into reading the words in a different way.

If you enjoy Connections, you should check out the board game Codenames. It's a popular party game that tasks players with using clues to guess certain words from a grid. As in Connections, the heart of the game lies in how many different possible interpretations the words could have. Connections also clearly owes a debt to Wordle, the hit puzzle game that the New York Times bought in 2022. Perhaps most obvious is the way it uses colored emojis to let you share the results of your puzzle with other players on social media: 

Connections 

Puzzle #80

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Each color corresponds to one grouping of four words; a row with mixed colors shows you incorrectly guessed one or more words in a group that didn't totally match. The rows also show what order you solved the Connections puzzle in. The rows aren't all created equal: the New York Times ranks them from "straightforward" to "tricky" starting with yellow and progressing to purple.

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Want to show up your Connections friends or just challenge yourself? Try to start by identifying the purple words first and nailing them with your very first guess!