NYT Connections today hints and answers for Wednesday, April 29 #1,053

Today's puzzle is an easy stroll through thundering puppets.

Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for April 29 below.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,053. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.

Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,052, 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

• Round
• Shadow
• Rumble
• Orders
• Ovation
• Sock
• Hand
• Roll
• Clap
• Joke
• Boom
• Stage
• Level
• String
• Room
• Phase

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: Step in a process
• 🟩 Green: Sound like thunder
• 🟦 Blue: Kinds of puppets
• 🟪 Purple: Standing ____

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 April 28 for puzzle #1,052 are much easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.7 out of 5.

• 🟨 Step in a process: Level, phase, round, stage
• 🟩 Sound like thunder: Boom, clap, roll, rumble
• 🟦 Kinds of puppets: Hand, shadow, sock, string
• 🟪 Standing ____: Joke, orders, ovation, room

I managed a reverse rainbow today, though it wasn't what I specifically went for.

I saw ovation and thought standing, which is how I got to standing orders, standing room and standing joke. I'll say standing joke is not a phrase I was not consciously familiar with, but it also felt like the only appropriate term as I went through the grid.

The grid shifted in such a way that shadow, sock, and string were stacked giving me the puppet idea. Then it was just a matter of finding hand, which was next to sock.

Admittedly, I snagged roll, rumble and boom as a fight. It wasn't until clap that I clicked the thunder.

Which left level, phase, round and stage as the final four.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Entreaty: Appeal, bid, call, request
• 🟩 Laundry day verbs: Dry, fold, sort, wash
• 🟦 Things that come in "books": Check, coupon, match, stamp
• 🟪 Sun ____: Dial, flower, screen, tan

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,052, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.

I sprinted through today's puzzle, not because it was easy per se but because it was the way the grid fell to me.

So, after a chore weekend, laundry day was the first thing that I saw with fold, sort, wash and dry.

I did take a strike trying out a poker set with bid, call, check and match but that was a push and I knew it.

Removing match got me thinking of matchbooks, which unlocked the blue set. I was able to grab the checkbook, stampbook and couponbook next.

I returned to my broken poker set next with bid, call, request and appeal.

Which left sundial, sunflower, sunscreen and suntan as my final four.