NYT Connections puzzle hint and answers for Saturday, September 9 (#90)

Cut straight through those tricky purple words in today's NYT Connections game with our help. A full set of answers for the Saturday, September 9 (90) game are ready and waiting for you just below, as is a helpful set of clues if you'd rather give yourself a little hint instead.

I ended up one word away from pinning down my chosen first group in what felt like 20 different ways today, so I did the sensible thing and tried to focus on another potential pairing instead. Thankfully that tidied away one of today's Connections in no time, leaving me free to arrange the rest in the right pairings.

NYT Connections hint today: Saturday, September 9

Yellow: Sporty words are the name of the game here. Think of the sort of calls you'd hear in one popular and chiefly American ball game.

Green: Today's greens like to keep things nice and toasty. Some of these can gently bake, while others are hot enough to melt steel. 

Blue: This group's a little bit odd. They're all aquatic, but also verbs too?

Purple: The English language is a strange and inconsistent beast, and these words are great examples of that. Pronunciations and spellings aren't always the best of friends.

Don't scroll any further until you're ready for the full answers!

NYT Connections answer today: Saturday, September 9 (90)

Yellow: Ball, Out, Safe, Strike (Baseball calls)

Green: Forge, Furnace, Kiln, Oven (Heat sources)

Blue: Carp, Catfish, Flounder, Smelt (Fish that are verbs)

Purple: Colonel, Salmon, Walk, Yolk (Silent "L")

More about the New York Times' Connections puzzle game

Connections is the NYT's latest popular puzzle game where you have to find the common thread that ties four seemingly unrelated words together. Can you find all four increasingly challenging groups of words before you make four mistakes? Don't forget: every day only has one solution even if some words look like they could belong to more than one group, and you can (and should) shuffle the grid as many times as you need to. It can help jog your brain into reading the words in a different way.

If you enjoy Connections, you should check out the board game Codenames. It's a popular party game that tasks players with using clues to guess certain words from a grid. As in Connections, the heart of the game lies in how many different possible interpretations the words could have. Connections also clearly owes a debt to Wordle, the hit puzzle game that the New York Times bought in 2022. Perhaps most obvious is the way it uses colored emojis to let you share the results of your puzzle with other players on social media: 

Connections
Puzzle #80

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Each color corresponds to one grouping of four words; a row with mixed colors shows you incorrectly guessed one or more words in a group that didn't totally match. The rows also show what order you solved the Connections puzzle in. The rows aren't all created equal: the New York Times ranks them from "straightforward" to "tricky" starting with yellow and progressing to purple.

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Want to show up your Connections friends or just challenge yourself? Try to start by identifying the purple words first and nailing them with your very first guess!