Today's puzzle asks for love and spring.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 17 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,194. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,193, 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
- Spring
- Subway Station
- Prestige
- Triangle
- Tap
- Give
- Language
- Fountain
- Well
- Bounce
- Sewer Line
- Handles
- Sheep Detectives
- Mine Shaft
- Flexibility
- Wolverine
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Stretch
- 🟩 Green: Tubular
- 🟦 Blue: The
- 🟪 Purple: Lover
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: Elasticity
- 🟩 Green: Things that are underground
- 🟦 Blue: Hugh Jackman movies, with "the"
- 🟪 Purple: Love ____
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 16 for puzzle #1,194 are an eensy bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Elasticity: Bounce, flexibility, give, spring
- 🟩 Things that are underground: Mine shaft, sewer line, subway station, well
- 🟦 Hugh Jackman movies, with "the": Fountain, prestige, sheep detectives, wolverine
- 🟪 Love ____: Handles, language, tap, triangle
I almost immediately spotted the movies starting with The Prestige and The Fountain, The Sheep Detectives confirmed it and then I just had to find The Wolverine.
I was thinking underground tubes when I grabbed mine shaft, sewer line, and subway station. I didn't immediately hit on well but we got there.
The springy stuff stuck out right away, so I assumed it was yellow and popped in handles, language, tap and triangle without really considering the love aspect.
This left bounce, flexibility, give and spring as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Poets' middle names: Barrett, carlos, st. vincent, wadsworth
- 🟩 Starting with U.S. coins: Dimension, nickelodeon, pennywise, quarterback
- 🟦 Undercover operative: Asset, mole, plant, sleeper
- 🟪 Sausages plus a letter: Borat, clink, frank-n-furter, widener
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,193 which had a difficulty rating of 2.1 out of 5.
I struggled with today's puzzle despite the rating. It just refused to come together for quite a while. Outside of the blue set, I thought any of the three would be a purple or blue group in any other puzzle.
I started with Barrett, Carlos, St. Vincent and Wadsworth since I recognized them as names, but couldn't remember why.
The green set snuck in next with pennywise and nickelodeon. That left quarterback and dimension.
I was guessing with long john silver and marigold as metals, and it seemed to work with latin and steam iron.
I honestly never saw the sausages until well after I solved the puzzle with borat (brat), clink (link), frank-n-furter (frank), and widener (weiner). Good thing it was last, I suppose.
