Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #380 on June 25, a little harder than yesterday's answer, this puzzle from the Connections companion has a difficulty rating of 32 out of 5

We update our Connections clues and hints 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 (#379)

There are spoilers for Connections 380 ahead Only read this if you want to know the answer to today's Connections

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 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 the answer, scroll down further

Here's a bigger clue: Today's puzzle seems to be about gossip It may have something to do with bean-counting, which may divide the group Or there is a silent character that may hide the path to greater fortune Or Tuesday, lemon

So what is the answer to today's connection in game #380?

Drum roll, please

There is a podcast I sometimes listen to called "Normal Gossip," and that may have been what I had in mind when I started today's puzzle It seemed to me that many of the words were connected to gossip or related to talking about gossip

Of course, the puzzle came right out of the yellow category featuring "dish," "spill," and "talk"; "tell" seemed too similar to "talk," so I hesitated

The green category took a little longer to find; "branch" and "fork" caught my eye immediately, but "secret" was incorrect because I was in the middle of a dungeon search 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 did not make a silent association Instead, I just saw that each word had the letters K and N next to each other It worked, but not for a puzzle like this

Purple was then a makeshift filling I had looked at the formula and the recipe earlier in the day, but I couldn't find a match So we were looking for other connections that would split these two words Perhaps it was a good thing I saved for SECRET and TICKET to find success

I am reading this late in the day According to the Connections Companion, the Connections solution to game #378, which had a difficulty score of 3 out of 5, is as follows

Perhaps it was because I had just eaten lunch, but it only took me a few seconds to parse the green category The word "meat" feels like a red herring to distract from the "main" and "side Both have multiple meanings, but only one blends seamlessly with things like desserts and appetizers

The yellow category was also quickly filled Raw" and "tender" have enough in common to lump them together (though "meat" again made me ask myself, "What is it about meat that makes it so special?") Following the thread further, it turned out that "sensitive" was not that far removed from either

Blue and Purple is where I began to think hard, groping around Today's purple category is a term associated with a common color Red flesh, red carpet, and red tape are common, but Red Delicious, the name of an apple variety, not so much Or perhaps I am an anomaly, not having enough of a taste for apples to know the names of apple varieties

There is one word in the blue category that is a personal pet peeve of mine It's full of homonyms, words related to animals that are pronounced the same but have different meanings: bare (bear) and deer (deer) are clever, and kudos to The Times for mousse (moose) But new What in the world is new? Well, dear readers, a quick Google search reveals that gnu is another name for gnu But I'm still going to hold a grudge Next time I see a gnu, I'm going to run for it