Today's puzzle doubles up on vowels and explosive power in the kitchen.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for August 22 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,169. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,168, 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
- Antifreeze
- Vacuum
- Baking Soda
- Volcano
- Vinegar
- Vodka
- Tinderbox
- Potato battery
- Skiing
- Home fries
- Club soda
- Powder keg
- Hydrogen peroxide
- Bazaar
- Vichyssoise
- Time bomb
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Tick tick boom
- 🟩 Green: Double it and give it to the next person
- 🟦 Blue: Spuds
- 🟪 Purple: Laundry
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: Potentially explosive things
- 🟩 Green: Double vowels
- 🟦 Blue: Made with potatoes
- 🟪 Purple: Household stain removers
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 August 23 for puzzle #1,169 are a lot harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Potentially explosive things: Powder keg, time bomb, tinder box, volcano
- 🟩 Double vowels: Antifreeze, bazaar, skiing, vacuum
- 🟦 Made with potatoes: Home fries, potato battery, vichyssoise, vodka
- 🟪Household stain removers: Baking soda, club soda, hydrogen peroxide, vinegar
I think it shows I'm the go-to stain wrangler in my household with how quickly I was able to spot today's purple category clues: baking soda, club soda, hydrogen peroxide, and vinegar.
After that I hopped on over the easiest category with four explosive things: powder keg, time bomb, tinderbox, and volcano. I thought volcano and and potato battery might be connected as common science fair projects, but with no other clues fitting that category I nixed that line of thinking.
I thought green might be double letters, not vowels, and struck out once trying to include vichyssoise (which, I want to note, the New York Times Connections crew misspelled — they added an extra "s" before the "c") with the rest. I realized the connection was even more specific, and swapped in bazaar along with skiing, vacuum, and antifreeze.
That left blue as today's rote fill with home fries, potato battery, vichyssoise, and vodka.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Carpentry tools: Chisel, hammer, plane, saw
- 🟩 Kinds of melon: Bitter, musk, water, winter
- 🟦 Garden hose settings: Cone, jet, mist shower
- 🟪____ Girls of pop culture: Gilmore, golden, mean, spice
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,168, which had a difficulty rating of 1.3 out of 5.
I was on the girls train almost immediately with Gilmore Girls, then it was a simple matter of finding Golden Girls, Spice Girls and Mean Girls.
Of the remaining three, in a harder puzzle anyone of them could be yellow. So I was just guessing color at this point.
Chisel, hammer, place and saw make up the yellow.
Melons get bitter, musk, water and winter ( this probably should have been the blue.
Then we have garden hoses with cone, jet, mist, and shower.
