Today's puzzle is not mushroom-based, but it's a starting point.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for July 31 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,146. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,145, 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
- Mold
- Spear
- Dapple
- Princess
- Mushroom
- Joystick
- Slime
- Fungus
- Cheerios
- Dinosaur
- Fashion
- Model
- Gleek
- Shape
- Plumber
- Jdate
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Build
- 🟩 Green: Nintendo
- 🟦 Blue: Food pyramid
- 🟪 Purple: Happiness
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: Construct
- 🟩 Green: Super Mario figures
- 🟦 Blue: Fruits plus starting letter
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with merriments
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 July 31 for puzzle #1,146 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 out of 5.
- 🟨 Construct: Fashion, model, mold, shape
- 🟩 Super Mario figures: Dinosaur, mushroom, plumber, princess
- 🟦 Fruits plus starting letter: Dapple, jdate, slime, spear
- 🟪 Starting with merriments: Cheerios, fungus, gleek, joystick
I found today's puzzle very interesting from the spore-based trap set to the blue category and what it's doing.
I actually missed the potential fungal trap until after I put in the Mario characters of dinosaur, mushroom, plumber and princess. After submitting the green set I then saw the fungus, slime and mold.
Gleek was my way into the next set because I was curious where it went. Being near Cheerios clicked me into the happy theme alongside fungus and joystick.
The blue set is interesting because the word plus a letter category is usually a purple type, not blue. I can't recall ever seeing this type of category used for blue before now. Anyway it's fruits with dapple, jdate, slime, and spear.
Which left the yellow set of fashion, model, mold and shape for the final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Virtuous: Fair, good, just, right
- 🟩 Activities with multiple balls: Beer pong, bingo, juggle, pool
- 🟦 Cruise lines: Carnival, celebrity, princess, viking
- 🟪 On the ____, to mean "precise": Dot, mark, money, nose
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,145, which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5.
It didn't really matter what the other sets were; I saw the cruise ships almost immediately with princess and Carnival. It was quick work to lock down celebrity and viking next.
Did I somewhat see the on the (blank) group? Yes, did I get stuck on the idea of the word dot matrix, which broke the set for me? Also yes.
Which is why I went with the ball-based set of beer pong, pool, bingo and juggling, though I was initially looking for bar games.
Anyway, that left fair, good, just and right as my final virtuous four.
