Today’s Connections Hints & Answers For July 18, 2024 (Puzzle #402)

Beating the contest that is Connections does not win you any grand prizes, but it does feel like an accomplishment when you beat your previous scores and earn that perfect. When you are struggling and do not want to lose your streak, it helpful to have a few nudges in the right direction so you at least get to finish the puzzle. Today was a bit challenging, but we have all the tips you need and a few hints as we made our own mistakes.

To continue this battle with yourself, you can try out the daily Spelling Bee puzzle, which allows players to test their knowledge of English words and brings you back to your younger years of trying to memorize words for the annual contest of the same name. We are still bitter we did not finish the competition after advancing to the second round on the word “hoping” in third grade. The real spelling has been emblazoned into our brains ever since.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

JULY 18 #402

We have a few tips for you before we start spoiling answers and categories, so pay close attention if you want to solve the puzzle without them:

• One category is about spots to gather
• One category has to do with a specific sport
• One category is all about spectacle
• One category could be solved by looking at a feature on your phone used daily

If those hints are not enough, or you just want to make sure you get it right, we have all the answers you need below:

Today’s Connections Answers

JULY 18 #402

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

The easier of the categories today, it is all about places out in the open that people traditionally gather in. Whether it is for shopping or spending some time on the lawn or even playing a game, these are the places to do it. COURT usually refers to a space dedicated to games. PLAZA and SQUARE have very similar meanings as public gathering spaces. YARD can be small or large but it is still a fun place to gather casually and enjoy good weather when you have it.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

While many of these terms can used to mean various sporting or competitive events, they have chosen to specify that they are all boxing-related. CONTEST and MATCH certainly feel like very similar terms, but BOUT and ROUND might be more specific. That being said, as long as you recognize that these could all be part of some sort of competition, you should get it without having to know anything about boxing. After all, we did.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

This category is where we made a couple mistakes: namely, that we were fairly certain SPARKLES belonged here. After all, it seems to go with the POMP & circumstance displayed by the rest of the words, and it seemed to us to make more sense than FLASH did. We kept getting the “One Away” hint, not realizing SPARKLES did not belong here. A big hint that it did not that we ignored is the ‘s’ on the end, as none of the other words here are plural.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

We actually don’t know what most of the Emoji are called, so this one stumped us a bit and was part of the reason we kept putting SPARKLES in the other category. And while the hint would have helped us eliminate SPARKLES from the previous category, it would have also seemingly eliminated it from this one. Determining where FLASH belongs is your best bet to solving this one on your own, and is something to learn from in future puzzles – for us as much as anyone.

Other Games Like Connections

If you made it through this puzzle, you deserve to have some razzle-dazzle in your life. While we may not be able to help you with that, we can give you some winks and nudges to go try out these other puzzles.