Today's puzzle gets old-timey for some sports.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for July 2 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,117. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,116, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
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.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Mockingbird
- Field Mouse
- Tom-Tom
- Court Jester
- Mime
- Looking Glass
- Track Record
- Billy Goat
- Diamond Ring
- Spectacles
- Dan Dan Noodles
- Copycat
- Talkie
- Rich Text
- T-1000
- Water Closet
We have the Connections categories below but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Apes
- 🟩 Green: Modern relic
- 🟦 Blue: Short name
- 🟪 Purple: Arena
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: They impersonate other things
- 🟩 Green: Old-timey names for things we still use
- 🟦 Blue: Starting with nicknames
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with sports venues
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.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on July 1 for puzzle #1,117 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Dividing structures: Fence, gate, hedge, wall
- 🟩 Participate in some Winter Olympics: Curl, luge, skate, ski
- 🟦 Common recyclables: Bottle, box, can, newspaper
- 🟪 What "draft" might refer to: Breeze, on tap, recruit, sketch
I almost had the reverse rainbow today, save for one pesky green set. Ah well.
I've been using spectacles for a minute as a cute way to thesaurus my way around saying smart glasses over and over. That's where my focus went to start today. Looking glass was right above, and a recent Count of Monte Cristo put me in mind of older times. Water closet soon followed; it took a minute for talkie, but we got there.
Track record and field mouse is how I got the venues set. Court jester followed, and I actually used the ring portion of diamond ring despite the clear pattern. However, you arrive, I suppose.
Now the nicknames stuck out with dan dan noodles, tom-tom, and billy goat before I landed on rich text.
And that left the impersonators in mime, copycat, mockingbird, and T-1000.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Dividing structures: Fence, gate, hedge, wall
- 🟩 Participate in some Winter Olympics: Curl, luge, skate, ski
- 🟦 Common recyclables: Bottle, box, can, newspaper
- 🟪 What "draft" might refer to: Breeze, on tap, recruit, sketch
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,116, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5.
Casablanca had me thinking of movies straight away, so it was short work knocking out Fargo, Munich and Chicago.
Long Island and Moscow shifted next to each other when I put in the green set. Seeing those put me in mind of cocktails. Moscow and Singapore were quick finds.
I took the homophones next when I was thinking of champagne and champagne. Thus, we got to china, cologne and limerick.
Admittedly, I never made the geography connection in this geographic grid, which is an annoying failure. So my final four were Dominican Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Indianapolis, and Nigeria.
