Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle No. 409, July 24, a little easier than the day before.

We update our Connections hints and tips every day. And if the hints aren't enough, see the four answers below, along with the category titles 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, #408.

There are spoilers for Connections #409. 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 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 is a bigger clue. Today's puzzle is full of traps. Try to solve the purple category first and concentrate on the yellow.

Now for the answer to today's game #409, Connections.

Drum roll please.

There seems to be a trend this week of puzzles getting easier as the day goes on, starting at 3.7 and today we're told it's 2.4.

I always wondered why the puzzles were so low in difficulty, with so many traps for easy puzzles. It's not surprising that many puzzlers fail today. If you get caught up in trying to fit the yellow and purple around the traps without knocking them down first, I think you'll really get tripped up.

The first trap I got stuck in was around the blue category.

I immediately saw a calf and a kid. I immediately saw a fawn and a foal. I was wrong. kid is a fawn, so it could have been a kid, but kid got me. there was also a Kit, so I switched the two and got the blue category.

The second trap for me was related to body parts and chicken fillets. I was trying to push shoulders, ribs, breasts, and thighs into one category. It didn't work. The second trap.

Shortly thereafter, I was able to clear that tricky part of the chicken cut.

The purple and yellow categories were then easy to fill. This is unusual since the yellow category is usually a fairly straightforward hole to fill.

The purple category was also interesting, but by the time I got to ladders, firings, shoulders, and muscles, I was ready to exit this category.

I'm reading this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3 out of 5.

Days like today are when I have to think about what purple categories I like and dislike. Of the similarities, I dislike “words minus one letter” the most.

It should be easier than yesterday's puzzle, but I struggled today.

My first strike was trying to line up the yellow category with charlatans, hot dogs, peacocks, and showboats instead of ham in the blue category. In general, I think it works, but it definitely fits the scam, quackery, and sham.

Here's where the problem arose. I just couldn't figure out the connection between the green word and the purple word. For too long I had noise, sound, speed, and just hoped another word would fit, only to get two strikes in a row because I was forcing it.

I was finally able to narrow it down to noise, sound, beep, tweet, word when I decided to just cross out words that didn't fit at all.

Still, I don't think word fits into the Utterance category.

Anyway, the purple category remained, and despite my love of Looney Tunes, I found no joy in this category.

On some days, my mind would go against me, and in my case, I stared blankly at the screen for longer than I wanted to admit. It was empty.