Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #402 on July 17, which is only 0.1 degree harder than yesterday's answer.

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 have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle #400.

There are spoilers for connection #402. 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 be able to 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. Today's puzzle will remind you that there are errands all over town that you surely haven't done, while keeping an eye out for the herd of animals, frustrating our leadership for generations.

Now for the answer to today's Game #402 Connection.

Drum roll please.

I don't think I've ever been as frustrated with memorizing fills as I was with today's purple category. We'll talk about this another time.

I thought today's yellow category was a trap. One of the real traps is the “laundry” tease: laundromat, hamper, cart, laundry. Of course, that doesn't work. Laundromats are merely places alongside banks, post offices, and supermarkets. Using a laundromat reminds me that I have a few errands to run out of the house.

Having made it past the laundry trap, I moved on to the hamper, already thinking about the combination of curb and restraint. check was easy to find from there; I wondered if I should include nix, but that's not a good synonym.

The blue category is fun with animal group words. Flock, pride, school, herd, etc. are common ones that most people know. My personal favorite is the Congress of Owls. I love discovering new names for them.

My irritation with the purple category stems from the fact that it is almost a category of trap words; with the exception of Bide, most words can be seen in the various wrong connections you might make. When you finally fill in the purple, it is inconsistent. For example, it is not a group of presidents ending in “on” or “er.”

It is not a grab bag of anything. The thing is that none of these words work with the other three existing categories. Worse.

Basically, the categories need to stand alone, even if we use some of them to trick puzzlers. In this example, I don't think it stands alone, and as noted, it has very little theme. It can still trap people, but it needs to be consistent.

Where do you stop at the beginning of the name; Washing could have been Wash. If you needed a word instead of Nixo, it could have been Harding's Hard or the Johnsons' John. Cool of Coolidge was also interesting. This four-letter answer has some consistency and still has a trap factor with the other words in the grid.

I shouldn't be this frustrated with one category, but there it is, it was awful.

I'm reading this late in the day. This is Connections Answer for game #401, which according to Connections Companion had a difficulty rating of 2.6 out of 5.

We have been on a winning streak here of being the first to win the purple category, and that was supposed to continue today.

I actually had Pan, Parker, and Rabbit, but for some reason it didn't hit me that Piper was Peter. Especially since I spent many a birthday party at Peter Piper Pizza, San Antonio's version of Chuck E. Cheese's. There seem to be a lot of them in Arizona, but the only one I remember is in Texas. After all, I was the last one to eat Purple.

So yellow was actually the first category. Testy and Cross were easy to find from there.

The grid fell so that pilots, spares, and trials were close together. From there it was just a matter of finding the connection to Exploratory.

To be honest, Broadway musicals are not my thing, and I would not have entered this category if I hadn't almost held the purple category. I chose this production because it didn't fit in with “The Three Peters.”

Not my best day.