Today's puzzle is pretty straightforward, even if the answers are a little shaken.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 30 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,207. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,206, 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
- Tambourine
- Septum
- Decent
- Bond
- Martini
- Option
- Novelty
- Casino
- Spray Paint
- Octopussy
- Donnie Brasco
- Future
- Bugsy
- Etch A Sketch
- Stock
- Scarface
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Trading
- 🟩 Green: Rattle
- 🟦 Blue: Crime
- 🟪 Purple: The year
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: Securities
- 🟩 Green: Things that are shaken (not stirred)
- 🟦 Blue: Gangster movies
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with month abbreviations
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 September 30 for puzzle #1,207 are minutely easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.4 out of 5.
- 🟨 Securities: Bond, future, option, stock
- 🟩 Things that are shaken (not stirred): Etch a sketch, martini, spray paint, tambourine
- 🟦 Gangster movies: Bugsy, casino, donnie brasco, scarface
- 🟪 Starting with month abbreviations: Decent, novely, octopussy, septum
Bugsy immediately put me in the mind of gangsters, which was confirmed by Scarface and Donnie Brasco. However, it took a moment for me to find Casino.
I was in movie mind when I spotted martini and Bond. Nothing else, other than Octopussy, fit the Bond theme, but Etch A Sketch clicked the shaking things. That led to spray paint and tambourine.
The securities words leapt out, but I figured them for the yellow set, so I dropped in decent, novelty, octopussy, and septum instead.
Which leaves bond, future, option and stock as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Secluded: Hidden, remote, secret, tucked away
- 🟩 River features: Delta, drainage basin, mouth, streambed
- 🟦 First words of Pixar films: Finding, inside, monsters, toys
- 🟪 Phrases hiding Greek letters: Freeze tag, home game, model, tank, oral phase
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,206 which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5.
I was thinking of rivers when I started today's puzzle. I grabbed delta, drainage basin, stream bed and then mouth.
I spotted the yellow set but saved it and wasn't sure about the purple and blue sets until I came up with a somewhat absurd group that used the purple words but had nothing to do with the eventual category.
Anyway, I put in finding, inside, monsters and toy as a guess. Look at that, Pixar movies.
Since my experiments were working, I dropped in freeze tag, home game, model tank, and oral phase, which are hiding Greek letters. Presumably, Zeta, Mega, Delta and Alpha.
And my final four was hidden, remote, secret, and tucked away.
