Today's puzzle serves a match point from the ring, but something smells fishy.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for August 24 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,170. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,169, 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
- Sole
- Deserve
- Main
- Eyelet
- Heel
- Prime
- Ex-love
- Arch
- Mullet
- Kayfabe
- Beset
- Pike
- Face
- Tang
- Chief
- Jobber
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Swimmers
- 🟩 Green: Head
- 🟦 Blue: John Cena
- 🟪 Purple: Match
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: Fish
- 🟩 Green: Principal
- 🟦 Blue: Pro-wrestling lingo
- 🟪 Purple: Letter homophone plus tennis term
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 24 for puzzle #1,170 are a lot harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Fish: Mullet, pike, sole, tang
- 🟩 Principal: Arch, chief, main, prime
- 🟦 Pro-wrestling lingo: Face, heel, jobber, kayfabe
- 🟪Letter homophones plus tennis term: Beset, deserve, ex-love, eyelet
I went down the line today, starting with four types of fish regularly caught at the lakes out here in the Midwest (or at least, I assume): mullet, pike, sole, and tang.
After that came a quartet of synonyms with chief, main, prime, and arch. That last one took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out. I struck out once trying to include face among the rest.
I know next to nothing about wrestling, but heel and jobber I've heard mentioned in that context before. Of the remaining clues, face seemed like a possible candidate, and once I looked up what kayfabe was, I threw that in with the rest for blue.
That left purple as today's rote fill with a particularly convoluted connection. Beset, deserve, ex-love, and eyelet make up that category.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Potentially explosive things: Powder keg, time bomb, tinder box, volcano
- 🟩 Double vowels: Antifreeze, bazaar, skiing, vacuum
- 🟦 Made with potatoes: Home fries, potato battery, vichyssoise, vodka
- 🟪Household stain removers: Baking soda, club soda, hydrogen peroxide, vinegar
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,169, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I think it shows I'm the go-to stain wrangler in my household with how quickly I was able to spot today's purple category clues: baking soda, club soda, hydrogen peroxide, and vinegar.
After that I hopped on over the easiest category with four explosive things: powder keg, time bomb, tinderbox, and volcano. I thought volcano and and potato battery might be connected as common science fair projects, but with no other clues fitting that category I nixed that line of thinking.
I thought green might be double letters, not vowels, and struck out once trying to include vichyssoise (which, I want to note, the New York Times Connections crew misspelled — they added an extra "s" before the "c") with the rest. I realized the connection was even more specific, and swapped in bazaar along with skiing, vacuum, and antifreeze.
That left blue as today's rote fill with home fries, potato battery, vichyssoise, and vodka.
