Today’s Connections Hints & Answers For July 17, 2024 (Puzzle #401)

Sometimes you might feel inhibited and like all your Connections skills have been inhibited, but there are lots of ways to recover and get back in the game. There are tougher puzzles than others on certain days, and today there are some interesting red herrings that might lead to a few false guesses. However, if you look closely, you can see past the creator’s tricks.

If you feel like you have a puzzle itch to scratch, you can try out the daily Vertex puzzle that tests your image-building skills as opposed to your word or category-building ones. This means you will be creating the boundaries of the picture by connecting dots to create smaller geometrical shapes that create a larger overall picture. It is very satisfying and a great way to scratch any remaining puzzle itch your fingers may have.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

JULY 17 #401

If you want a few hints before we start spoiling answers, there are some that might make it easier for you to guess the rest on their own:

• There is no category about doing laundry
• One category is about verbs all meaning the same thing
• School is not meant to be a building in today’s puzzle
• One category features prominent names in American history

If you still want some hints but do not want the full answers spoiled, the box below features the actual category names. This should make it easier to parse out which words are red herrings and which words you want to put together.

Today’s Connections Answers

JULY 17 #401

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

This category is easy once you spot it but hard if you consider all the words that could or could not be in it. There are 3-4 words that have to do with laundry depending on your intepretation in this puzzle, and none of them belong together in a single category.

SCHOOL also looks like it could belong here, but it will not be used until the second to last one. Instead, you are left with BANK, LAUNDROMAT, POST OFFICE, and SUPERMARKET as buildings you can see around town.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

HAMPER is the laundry-related word in this category that actually is being used as a verb in this context. In fact, all the words in this category are verbs that all mean to hinder someone or something. CURB is a little less intense than the others, but it still means interfering in some way. Once we figured out that laundry was not a category, it was easier to see this one for what it was.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

The first category with no overt laundry-related words, although we supposed PACK could be stretched to mean packing clothes, this was an easier one for us to guess once we had the buildings out of the way.

SCHOOL could have cost you a few guesses earlier, but this felt easier to guess because of our previously mentioned obsession with Zoobooks. The inner zoologist in us recognized that it is a PRIDE of lions and a SCHOOL of fish, and after that filling in PACK and SWARM was much easier.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

The hardest by far if you have not guessed the other categories first, there is a reference to laundry in WASHING, and even a word that can mean to cut in NIX that might fit in with to hinder. That and the names are not fully written out, making it harder to recognize them as names. However, if it is the last category you can simply guess them and get your perfect score without too much trouble. You just simply have to BIDE your time to do so.

Other Games Like Connections

Once you have gotten over booing us for that pun, check out the other word-related puzzles in the box below: