Today's puzzle goes to the dogs.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 2 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,179. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,178, 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
- Bow
- Wow
- Top
- Floor
- Corn
- Sausage
- Salty
- Sheep
- Rescue
- Rosin
- Dazzle
- Prairie
- Shoulder Rest
- Hunting
- Mute
- Stun
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Not dog
- 🟩 Green: Not dog
- 🟦 Blue: Dog
- 🟪 Purple: Dog
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: Flabbergast
- 🟩 Green: Things in a violin case
- 🟦 Blue: ____ Dogs (that are dogs)
- 🟪 Purple: ____ Dogs (that aren't dogs)
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 2 for puzzle #1,179 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Flabbergast: Dazzle, floor, stun, wow
- 🟩 Things in a violin case: Bow, mute, rosin, shoulder rest
- 🟦 ____ Dogs (that are dogs): Hunting, rescue, sausage, sheep
- 🟪 ____ Dogs (that aren't dogs): Corn, prairie, salty, top
The Connections crew got cute today but I found it fun.
I spotted prairie dog first today and went hunting for other dogs where I found sausage, hunting and sheep. Strike one.
Resetting, I spotted hunting and decided to swap out prairie. Blue set down.
Prairie still struck me as a dog and corn dog settled it for me. That's how I got to salty dog and top dog for the non-dog dogs.
With those out of the way, the violin words were easy to spot in bow, mute, rosin and shoulder rest.
Which left dazzle, floor, stun and wow as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 "I Promise!": Cross my heart, for real, on god, pinky swear
- 🟩 Long, skinny things often seen together: Arrow, golf club, pick-up stick, spaghetto
- 🟦 Private investigators of fiction: Hercule Poirot, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Sherlock Holmes
- 🟪 Starting with words of intention: Aimee Mann, hope diamond, planetarium, wishy-washy
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,178, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I took an immediate first strike when I tried a card suits set with golf club, hope diamond, sam spade, and cross my heart. This may have been a trap set, but it also told me that these would individually go in other sets, as is the case with most trap sets.
I reset with what I was pursuing as singular items in arrow, golf club, pick-up stick and spaghetto for the green group.
The PIs of fiction stuck out to me and I knew by now the yellow set so the purple group was easy to compile with intentional words.
We have Aimee Mann, hope diamond, planetarium, and wishy-washy.
The detectives are hercule poirot, mike hammer, sam spade and sherlock holmes.
Which left the promises of cross my heart, for real, on god and pinky swear.
