Today's puzzle isn't tricky but it's not normal.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 3 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,180. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,179, 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
- Max
- Matchbox
- Maroon
- Average
- Blink
- Carmine
- Sum
- Flash
- Count
- Heartbeat
- Cinnabar
- Tonka
- Hot Wheels
- Vermillion
- Trice
- Micro Machines
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Fastly
- 🟩 Green: Hues
- 🟦 Blue: Play
- 🟪 Purple: Excel champion
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: Two shakes of a lamb's tail
- 🟩 Green: Shades of red
- 🟦 Blue: Toy car brands
- 🟪 Purple: Spreadsheet functions
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 3 for puzzle #1,179 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Two shakes of a lamb's tail: Blink, flash, heartbeat, trice
- 🟩 Shades of red: Carmine, cinnabar, maroon, vermilion
- 🟦 Toy car brands: Hot wheels, matchbox, micro machines, tonka
- 🟪 Spreadsheet functions: Average, count, max, sum
I found today's puzzle confusing, mostly because it didn't seem to follow any normal patterns, especially for the purple set.
I started with the toys in Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Micro Machines and Tonka, mostly because I currently play with those brands with my son. I was surprised to see that it was the blue set and not green or yellow.
I had spotted the spreadsheet functions, though I was thinking of them as math terms, not just spreadsheet tools and mentally put it in the green or yellow set.
With that in mind, I put in the colors of carmine, cinnabar, maroon and vermilion and was again surprised they were green.
Between the last two sets, I had no idea which was which. I put in trice, heartbeat, flash and blink because I thought trice would be a word that some people wouldn't know. Alas, it was yellow.
So, this left average, count, max and sum as the purple set. It's unusual even for a 2-rated puzzle. Generally, either the words connect in a unique way or require addition, subtraction or some other finnickery to make a connection. In any other Connections puzzle, this would probably be a yellow or green set. Odd.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 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
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,179, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.
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.
