Looking for answers to today's Connections. The difficulty level of Connections Companion is 3.3 out of 5.

We update our Connections hints and tips every day. And if the hints aren't enough, you can see all four answers along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in a different time zone, I've included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #380.

There are spoilers for connection #381. Only those who want to know the answer to today's connection should read on.

Alternatively, 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 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.

There are even bigger clues. Do not be distracted by the ads. Also, with the 4th of July fast approaching, one of the categories is a timely salute to the troops.

So, what's the answer to today's Round 381 connection?

Drum roll please.

I'm from a Navy town (yay for 757), so the yellow category in today's puzzle should have been easy. However, something must have short-circuited in my brain when I saw the word "private" alongside "public" and "audience." It took me hours to find the fourth answer after "general," "captain," and "major.

Purple was surprisingly easy to decide, as "pop-up" was the crucial clue. As I began to think about the ads, "attack" seemed obvious, and "personal" and "want" followed nicely.

Green really confused me. At first I thought it was related to tools with "jack" and "socket." But it finally hit me when I realized that "outlet" and "port" have nothing to do with "audience" or "market": they have to do with plugs. It is not a person.

That leaves only blue. Since I had already connected the aforementioned "audience" and "market," only "appetite" and "demand" remained, and it became clear that the advertising theme of today's puzzle was deeper than expected.

Read this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty was 3.2 out of 5.

There is a podcast called "Normal Gossip" that I listen to from time to time, and that may have been on my mind when I started today's puzzle. A lot of the words seemed to relate to gossip or to talking about gossip.

Of course, I was immediately taken out of the yellow category featuring "dish," "spill," and "talk"; I hesitated because "tell" seemed too similar to "talk.

The green category took a little longer to find; "branch" and "fork" caught my eye immediately, but "secret" was like exploring a dungeon, which is not correct. The "part" and "split" came up almost as soon as I stopped playing DnD.

Maybe I'm dumb, but I saw the words in the blue category, but didn't make the silent connection. Instead, I just saw that each word was next to each other with the letters K and N. It worked, but not a good way to do a puzzle like this.

Purple was then a makeshift fill-in. I had seen the formula and the recipe earlier in the day, but could not find a match. So I was looking for other connections that would split these two words, maybe saving them for secret and ticket.