Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #386 of July 1, a little easier than yesterday's answer, this puzzle from Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 3.2 out of 5.

We update our Connections clues and hints daily. 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, #385.

There are spoilers for connection 386. Only read this if you want to know the answer to today's connection.

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 clue: Today's puzzle is about people who are in charge, for better or worse; the 4th of July is coming up, and today's puzzle should get you thinking about the entire North American continent.

Now, what is the answer to today's game #386 Connection?

Drum roll, please.

With the Fourth of July just around the corner, I figured there would be at least one category this week with an American theme. And I was right. But the crew at Connections went a step further and prepared a category themed on our neighbor to the north.

To solve the purple category, I had to dig deep into my brain what I had learned in high school geography class. I was not able to immediately think of Nova Scotia, because where I come from, Nova is a common acronym for Northern Virginia. But once I realized that Northwest did not refer to the Pacific Northwest, everything became clear.

The other categories were fairly easy: Usher and Direct seemed related, and once I started picking up the threads, the words Lead and Guide became clear.

Similarly, Con and Racket stood out as obvious, and Sting and Hustle were not far behind.

The blue category was the only one that confused me. At first I could not tell whether the seal referred to an animal or an emblem. The pyramid and the eagle could be connected as symbols of different countries, but with Washington also on the board, it definitely seemed to have something to do with the United States.

I am reading this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3.7 out of 5.

The easiest category of yesterday's puzzle gave me the most trouble. Among other tree-related words, I was fooled by Blue's Chestnut, which was quite disconcerting at first, partly because I had never heard Saw used in the context of an old proverb. Thankfully, I took my chances with Adage and Maxim.

Green again had red herring at Wood. I was glad to see that the summer barbecue was a good one, because it was easy to connect the dots between charcoal, electric, and gas, and to see through the connection traps.

I chose blue next because I had already thought about trees in the previous two categories. Because I must confess that I don't know anything about hot tubs.