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Today's puzzle is a harder one that asks you to think about rap, art and ghosts.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for June 4 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,089. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,088, 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
- Public
- Writer
- Salt
- Pepper
- Oil
- Vinegar
- Kitchen
- Tempera
- Panache
- Gouache
- Run
- Town
- Beastie
- Verve
- Acrylic
- Gusto
We have the Connections categories below but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Art
- 🟩 Green: Vim
- 🟦 Blue: NYC
- 🟪 Purple: Hidden
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: Painting media
- 🟩 Green: Espirit
- 🟦 Blue: Starts of classic hip-hop groups
- 🟪 Purple: Ghost ____
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 June 4 for puzzle #1,089 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Painting media: Acrylic, gouache, oil, tempera
- 🟩 Espirit: Gusto, panache, verve, vinegar
- 🟦 Starts of classic hip-hop groups: Beastie, public, run, salt
- 🟪 Ghost ____: Kitchen, pepper, town, writer
I imagine the puzzle is baiting us with the oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper bit, which just put me in mind of Jersey Mike's sandwiches. My actual first thought was Salt n' Pepa.
Beastie is what solidified the hip-hop groups for me. This is how I got to Public Enemy and Run DMC for the blue set.
I legitimately thought the painting set would be slightly harder, so I was surprised when I grabbed gouache, oil, tempera, and acrylic thinking it would be the green set. I only know of gouache because I dated an art major in college. Perhaps this is one you can guess based on the other words.
Anyway, I knew the true green set now, so I popped in the ghost words of kitchen, pepper, town, and writer.
Which left gusto, panache, verve, and vinegar as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Kinds of rice: Brown, jasmine, sticky, sushi
- 🟩 Gummy bear descriptors: Colorful, gummy, sugary, ursine
- 🟦 Savory stuffed pastries: Empanada, fatayer, pasty, samosa
- 🟪 Disney princesses minus last letter: Arie, bell, moan, ray
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,088, which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5.
I was quite hungry when I started today's puzzle and the categories did not help.
So of course I spotted the pastries almost immediately with pasty, empanada, samosa and fatayer. All delicious.
Sticky put me on the rice train and it was a quick scan to get sushi, brown and jasmine for the yellow set.
I had gummy, sugary and ursine right way for the green set but I wasn't thinking gummy bear for some reason. Eventually, it did click and I grabbed colorful.
Which left the Disney princesses in Ariel, Belle, Moana, and Raya. I spent much of the puzzle trying to place Arie in an astrological set but never made the pivot to Disney. Ah well.
I'll eat my failure via samosa or maybe an empanada, maybe both? Ahh, but a fatayer would be good as well. So would a pasty. I am a simple man who wants bread filled with goodies.
