Today's puzzle has two sets that use identical techniques, which is somehow more annoying than it should be.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for August 15 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,161. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,160, 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
- Grinch
- Beanstalk
- Stage
- Lanyard
- Hightail
- Leg
- Soundtrack
- Hotfoot
- Beat
- Stretch
- Fried
- Chamomile
- Spent
- Eyeshadow
- Phase
- Worn Out
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Tired
- 🟩 Green: Part
- 🟦 Blue: Ruler
- 🟪 Purple: Creep
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: Exhausted
- 🟩 Green: Segment
- 🟦 Blue: Ending in units of length
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in synonyms for follow secretly
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 August 15 for puzzle #1,161 take a dive in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.8 out of 5.
- 🟨 Exhausted: Beat, fried, spent, worn out
- 🟩 Segment: Leg, phase, stage, stretch
- 🟦 Ending in units of length: Chamomile, grinch, hotfoot, lanyard
- 🟪 Ending in synonyms for follow secretly: Beanstalk, eyeshadow, hightail, soundtrack
I have this terrible habit of seeing for or leg and only thinking of Foghorn Leghorn. So, I endeavor to get rid of either word early just to clear it for myself.
Which is why I started with leg, phase, stage, and stretch.
Clearing it got me to see hotfoot and chamomile as lengths. Then I got lanyard. It took a moment to find grinch but we got there. I was a bit surprised this was the blue set and not purple; it feels like a purple.
Anyway, using the same idea, we got to the secretly follow words of beanstalk, eyeshadow, hightail, and soundtrack.
This left the yellow set of beat, fried, spent and worn out as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Black-and-yellow: Bumblebee, caution tape, charlie brown, wolverine
- 🟩 Places where everyone thinks the same ways: Bubble, echo chamber, hivemind, silo
- 🟦 Comic book artist's tools: Bristol board, dip pen, india ink, straightedge
- 🟪 Triangle logos: Bass ale, citgo, delta airlines, google drive
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,160, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.
I took two strikes to start the day: one with what I thought was a NATO code connection, and the second came as I was pursuing a somewhat synonym-based connection starting with straightedge.
I was able to reset by taking what I was thinking of as striped with bumblebee, Charlie Brown, caution tape and Wolverine.
With military codes out of the way, I saw india ink as art-based, which got me to bristol board, dip pen and straightedge.
I finally got the triangle set with Delta and Citgo. It took a moment to remember Bass Ale's logo. Anyway, then Google Drive closed it out.
This left bubble, echo chamber, hivemind and silo as my final four.
