Today's puzzle gets you batty but on board with the bluegrass state.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 20 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,197. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,196, 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
- Twilight
- Snow
- Tortilla
- Skate
- Derby
- Fried chicken
- Coaster
- Hover
- Blade
- Blue-ray
- Bluegrass
- Sand dollar
- Near Dark
- Bourbon
- Surf
- Sinners
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Pizza-shape
- 🟩 Green: Country roads
- 🟦 Blue: Fangs
- 🟪 Purple: Shredding
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: Round flat things
- 🟩 Green: Associated with Kentucky
- 🟦 Blue: Vampire movies
- 🟪 Purple: ___ boards you ride on
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 20 for puzzle #1,197 are a bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Round flat things: Blu-ray, coaster, sand dollar, tortilla
- 🟩 Associated with Kentucky: Bluegrass, bourbon, derby, fried chicken
- 🟦 Vampire movies: Blade, near dark, sinners, twilight
- 🟪 ___ boards you ride on: Hover, skate, snow, surf
My in-laws are from Kentucky, so once I saw bourbon and derby, my mind went straight to one place: Louisville. Bluegrass and fried chicken rounded out the rest of the green category.
Of all the remaining clues, sand dollar and blu-ray stuck out like sore thumbs. I tried to think of similarities and realize they both share the same shape, and that coaster and tortilla could be added to the mix to solve yellow.
Sinners was one of my favorite movies last year, and between that and twilight I figured vampires had to be the connection. Blade came easily enough, but it took me a second to remember near dark.
That left purple as today's rote fill with hover, skate, snow, and surf.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Widen one's scope: Branch out, diversify, expand, grow
- 🟩 Features of a kid's drawing: House, stick figure, sun, tree
- 🟦 Associated with Swinging London in the 1960s: Carnaby street, miniskirt, mod, twiggy
- 🟪 Starting with abbreviated math functions: Cos lettuce, log cabin, sin city, tan line
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,196 which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5.
I managed a reverse rainbow today thanks to math and a little Googling.
Cos lettuce stuck out to me as soon as I looked over the puzzle, and sin city confirmed the math for me. Then I just needed to find log cabin and tan line. I did look up cos lettuce afterwards to see if it was a real word and discovered that its another name for romaine lettuce.
Apparently, cos lettuce is the term in England; as an American, I've only ever heard or read romaine. Always nice to learn a new term.
Carnaby Street was the one I googled while solving because it didn't ring any bells, but seeing that it was in Soho clicked the Twiggy connection for me. Then I spotted mod and miniskirt to wrap it up.
I was thinking line drawings when I started putting house, sun, tree and stick figure together.
This left branch out, diversify, expand and grow as my rote fill.
