NYT Connections today hints and answers for Wednesday, April 22 #1,046

Today's puzzle requires some out-loud reading and some games.

Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for April 22 below.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,046. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.

Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,044, 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

• Truck
• Polish
• Nice
• Slug
• Deck
• Game
• Wheel
• Herb
• Clay
• Sock
• Reading
• Artist
• Sticks
• Glaze
• Punch
• Kiln

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: Pottery equipment
• 🟩 Green: Wallop
• 🟦 Blue: Words pronounced different ways as proper nouns
• 🟪 Purple: Pick-up ____

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 22 for puzzle #1,045 are harder to get than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at just 2.3 out of 5.

• 🟨 Pottery equipment: Clay, glaze, kiln, wheel
• 🟩 Wallop: Deck, punch, slug, sock
• 🟦 Words pronounced different ways as proper nouns: Herb, nice, polish, reading
• 🟪 Pick-up ____: Artist, game, sticks, truck

So sticks was my way into the puzzle when I thought pick up sticks while looking at it. That got me to pick up game and then truck. It took a minute to find artist but I figured I was on the right path.

I took deck, punch, slug and sock next because slug stood out to me as hitting.

I never connected the blue so i took the yellow pottery set because it made sense with clay, glaze, kiln and wheel.

And I wrapped it all up with herb, nice, polish and reading which sound different when used as proper nouns. Reading is the one that threw me because I could not think of what it went with.

Yesterday's Connections answers

• 🟨 Amble (in): Breeze, mosey, stroll, waltz
• 🟩 Balderdash: Baloney, bilge, bull, bunk
• 🟦 Kinds of bags: Crossbody, hobo, messenger, saddle
• 🟪 Starts of one-word James Bond movie titles: Gold, moon, octopus, thunder

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1045, which had a difficulty rating of 1.5 out of 5.

Bags were on the mind first as I spotted crossbody and messenger. Saddle came next but it did take a moment to find hobo.

I took the balderdash next where my start word was bilge and bull followed by bunk and baloney.

I'll admit that I didn't clock the James Bond movies but nicely when the grid reset after the green it stuck gold, moon octopus, and thunder in a square on the left side. Breeze, mosey, stroll, and waltz fell in a square on the right side.

So, I just did the first square and then the next one to lock in the purple then yellow sets.