Looking for today's Connections answer for Puzzle #407 Connections on July 22, a big jump in difficulty compared to yesterday's answer, this puzzle from Connections Companion had a difficulty score of 37 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, #406

There are spoilers for Connections #407 Only those who want to know the answer to today's Connections 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 the answer, scroll down further

There is a bigger clue The car will lead you to your favorite restaurant, where you will use the cooking utensils, so think of an area where you can jam out to your favorite tunes and make it your own

Now, the answer to today's game #404 Connection

Drum roll please

The seemingly unconnected words chain, fight, processor, and pyramid made for a fun challenge

Today's green was incredibly easy and the instrumental theme came together quickly From there I stumbled a bit

I discovered the connection between area, domain, and field as land ownership, but missed the sphere for longer than I'd like to admit

The blue categories are fun, and the words are designed to lead you in perfectly the wrong direction I eventually connected the words to traffic, leaving five seemingly random words: chain, fight, processor, pyramid, and sphere I sat on this for a while before I guessed that the sphere would lead to the yellow category

As I've said before, a fun purple category makes me smile in the morning

Enjoy the new week I hope today's puzzle starts your day off on a wonderful note

I'm reading this late in the day According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 27 out of 5

I think the trick to today's puzzle is that the math abbreviation applies to other words as well Tan (Tan), along with the words stump (stump) and saw (saw), are colors that seem to fit the tree theme

I actually struggled with yellow today and luckily found green first Composition, make-up, and structure were fixed as connected, but I was stuck on the fabric used to represent the cloth I threw in fabric as a guess and got it right

From there, I was able to sweep away blue as a tool

That left campaign, canvass, organize, stump, log, max, mod, and tan Not knowing that stump was a political term, we left these eight words alone for a while Thankfully, I had lined up four short words as guesses, and they were correct The answer, however, was that they were math abbreviations, which had nothing to do with the fact that they were all short words

That left the last four words, which later found their way to support the candidate Today I learned a new use for the phrase stump