Looking for answers to today's Connections? The Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 3.4 out of 5.

We update our Connections hints and tips daily. And if the hints aren't enough, see the four answers below, 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 #417.

There are spoilers for connection #418. Only read this if you want to know the answer to today's connection.

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, 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.

Here's a bigger hint: simply memorize the grammatical terms without straining. Instead of picturing a radio DJ, picture the guy behind the board at the club, and look for some greenwash.

Now, what is the answer to today's game #418, Connections?

Drum roll please.

I had a hard time today. From the easy ones.

I looked at the green category first and did mix, sample, scratch, and spin all at once. This was fun.

While looking for greens I looked at Strains and Taxes, so finding Tests and Trials was my next priority.

Early on I was thinking about grammar rules, especially tenses. Fortunately, they removed the other two categories, making it easier to look at direct, irregular, possessive, and present tense in the blue category. I understand what they wanted to do here, but I would have liked to have seen a different category name or relationship to grammar.

The purple category makes sense, but I could not find the fourth word. To me, lush does not mean green. Even though I know the phrase like lush forest, I take the word to mean drunk, but I still don't think of the word "green".

It was not something my mind willingly tried to connect. Fortunately, purple was the last color I solved, so it didn't matter much.

Are you reading this late in the day? According to Connection Companion, the difficulty level was 3.1 out of 5.

Whenever I knock out a yellow first, I always try to solve it straight through in order. That didn't happen today, but oh well.

These days everyone and everything is a brand that needs promotion, so it was easy to get through the hype, the market, the sales pitch, the sales pitch.

Green fell shortly thereafter, as I was already eyeing Cast, Chuck, Fling, and Haar while finishing up Yellow.

I worry about myself that I looked at the type of socks before I looked at the bookstore's genre. Still, as soon as I saw ankle and crew, I immediately thought "socks" and quickly found sweatshirts and tubes.

The bookstore section was a nice little end to the day, with fiction, humor, romance, and travel.