Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #229 from January 26 is trickier than yesterday's, and the Connections companion rates the difficulty of this puzzle at 3.6 out of 5.

We update our Connections hints and tips daily. And if the hints aren't enough, you can see all four solutions along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in a different time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #228.

There are spoilers in Connections #229. Only those who want to know the answer to today's Connections should read on.

Or see our NYT Connections How to Play Guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

While today's wordle solution guide recommends the best wordle starting words as a strategy, the Connections solution depends on identifying the categories that are connected from the 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by a color, with yellow being the easiest grouping and purple the most difficult. Hints are helpful as the answer is displayed after four wrong guesses.

If you need a hint to help you solve the groupings, here are each theme in order of difficulty:

If you read these hints, you should at least be able to find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you only want to know the answer, scroll down further.

Here's a bigger hint: Today, you will be presented with things like the contents of your wardrobe, but note that they are all arranged together. Instead, consider which items might be used in a sporting context and why this top hat is too small to fit your head.

Now, what is the answer to today's Round 229 connection?

Drum roll please.

Thanks to a childhood spent watching hours of Looney Tunes reruns, I enjoyed the rare privilege of being the first to solve the trickier purple category today. For me, the word Bugs is only followed by "bunny," so I might as well have been nonchalantly chewing carrots while hopping around trying to complete the Bad, Dust, and Honey categories.

Glove, Sock, Top Hat, and Boot forced me to consider the clothing connection here, but thankfully I took a beat before submitting this foursome as an answer. The words Strike and Bat also caught my eye, so I decided to include Glove and keep the baseball theme.

Despite my reservations, I typed in Bat, Base, Glove, Strike, and was just one more away from losing my first life. Thankfully, like baseball, connections give you several chances before you strike out.

Then I moved on from one famous American pastime to another. The seemingly random iron and thimble items made more sense when combined with the aforementioned boots and top hats, because, after all, they were the only way to get the ball out of the ballpark. Of course, these were the original tokens of Monopoly.

The remaining items are Blow, Lick, Sock, and Strike, which are terms that could have come straight out of Norman Mailer's "The Fight," but are synonymous with hard hitting. With today's connection complete, I am happy to report that there were no strikeouts or knockouts today.

You are reading this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 2.8 out of 5.

In today's Connections puzzle, words like handsome, legendary, popular, and icon shined before my eyes like red carpet stars, each vying for the spotlight of relevance. I felt like a scout carefully selecting the words that would star in my next movie.

Amidst the flashbulbs and chatter, a solitary hippo certainly caught my eye. What could be combined with this creature?

But first, I turned to the ancient letters and their digital avatars, Glyph matched with Symbol, then Icon, and finally Character nestled in, creating the green category of pictographs on the wall with the precision of a long-forgotten scribe.

Next came the puzzle's stern judges, Charge, Fine, Levy, and (in my opinion) their rather distant cousin Asses. They demanded compensation and completed the blue category with the authoritative stamp of penalties.

Finally, I returned to the hippos, who were patiently swimming alongside Legend, Lipid, and Handsome. I admit that it took me several minutes to see through their disguises and reveal the anatomical structures hidden in the prefixes - hand, hip, leg, and lip. The purple category was unearthed by a clever play on words, starting with body parts.

With a final flourish, the red carpet was rolled up and the puzzle was complete.