Today's puzzle hides sausages among poets.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for September 16 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,193. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,192, 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
- Frank-n-furter
- Latin
- Clink
- Pennywise
- Wadsworth
- Nickelodeon
- Borat
- Long John Silver
- St. Vincent
- Steam Iron
- Widener
- Dimension
- Quarterback
- Carlos
- Marigold
- Barrett
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Metals
- 🟩 Green: Payola
- 🟦 Blue: Writer
- 🟪 Purple: Hot dog
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: Ending in metal elements
- 🟩 Green: Starting with U.S. coins
- 🟦 Blue: Poets' middle names
- 🟪 Purple: Sausages plus a letter
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 #1,193 are slightly easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.1 out of 5.
- 🟨 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
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.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Instruct: Coach, direct, guide, train
- 🟩 Parts of a whistling kettle: Handle, lid, spout, whistle
- 🟦 Undercover operative: Asset, mole, plant, sleeper
- 🟪 Things that appear at the end: Caboose, december, dessert, epilogue
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,192 which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
For today's puzzle, I attempted a train set of coach, caboose, sleeper, and cabin, but that didn't work. As always, the obvious clue sets tend to be split individually among the four groups, so it gives you a starting point.
Still thinking about trains, I used whistle to get to the tea set with handle, lid and spout.
Plant clued me into the spies, which was confirmed with asset, mole and sleeper.
I then spotted the endings with caboose, December, dessert and epilogue.
This left coach, direct, guide and train as my final four.
