Hints, Answers For Sunday, September 28

Looking for a little help with your Sunday Connections puzzle? If you’re looking for extra clues – or the answers – you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find an extra set of hints, the categories for each group and, finally, the solution to today’s puzzle.

It’s the last weekend of September and before the week is out, we’ll plunge into October. A month for pumpkins, witches, ghouls and goblins and lots and lots of candy.

My weekend streaming guide is live just in case you’re in the mood for something new to watch. Superman is finally streaming and we have some promising new shows on Netflix, Prime Video and more. Slow Horses is back, and a really good new crime drama starring Ethan Hawke.

Okay, Connectioneers, it’s time to group some words!

If you’re looking for Saturday’s Connections guide, it’s right here.

How To Play Connections

Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.

The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.

There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.

You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints For Sunday, August 10th?

These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:

• BACKDOOR
• ORBIT
• VIRUS
• SHIELD
• TROJAN HORSE
• TRIDENT
• HORSESHOE
• ICE BREAKERS
• WORM
• AEGIS
• FLEUR-DE-LIS
• EXTRA
• GUARD
• PROTECTION
• LIGHTNING BOLT
• BUFFALO

Hints for the Connections groups today are:

• 🟡Yellow group – Defense.
• 🔵Blue group – Breath enhancers.
• 🟢Green group – Tech infections.
• 🟣Purple group – Think of American football imagery.

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:

• 🟡Yellow group – Backing
• 🔵Blue group – Gum brands
• 🟢Green group – Malicious software
• 🟣Purple group – NFL Team Logos

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:

• 🟡Yellow group – Aegis, Guard, Protection, Shield
• 🔵Blue group – Extra, Ice Breakers, Orbit, Trident
• 🟢Green group – Backdoor, Trojan Horse, Virus, Worm
• 🟣Purple group – Buffalo, Fleur-de-Lis, Horseshoe, Lightning Bolt

This was a much, much more challenging Connections than last Sunday’s. It’s interesting that the purple words were all NFL team logos since there’s a dedicated Sports Connections also.

I was a little thrown off by all the mythological words. TRIDENT, LIGHTNING BOLT, TROJAN HORSE, AEGIS. This was an effective batch of red herrings. But I was also pretty sure that computer viruses was a possibility, and noticed also that a lot of these words seemed to describe some form of defense or PROTECTION. I ended up going that route first, entering AEGIS, GUARD, PROTECTION and SHIELD (though this was after I tried a couple failed guesses).

With that out of the way, I went after the malicious software: TROJAN HORSE, BACKDOOR and VIRUS were pretty obvious, and the only other word that made sense was WORM.

I don’t chew gum – it hurts my jaw and gives me headaches – but at this point, I recognized the brands, mostly because ICE BREAKERS was so obviously that. I plugged in EXTRA, ORBIT and TRIDENT and that was the blue group out of the way.

Since there’s no poison word to make the final group a challenge, the remaining four were easy enough. I hadn’t thought of NFL team logos before this but BUFFALO, FLEUR-DE-LIS, HORSESHOE and LIGHTNING BOLT are all recognizable team logos for the Buffalo Bills, New Orleans Saints, Indianapolis Colts and the Los Angeles Chargers.

In any case, a fun challenge today. How did you do?

Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.