Looking for today's Connections answer, the difficulty of puzzle #424 on August 8 was much lower than yesterday's solution, with Connections Companion scoring a difficulty of 2.3 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, #423.

There are spoilers for connection #424. 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 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 are even bigger clues. Then take a breath and repeat before considering the main force.

Now, what is the answer to today's Round 424 connection?

Drum roll please.

After yesterday's jump in difficulty, it was surprising to see today's grid fall into easy territory.

I thought "radio" as soon as I saw the ham today and was able to hit purple early. Finding pirates, satellites, and talk was a fun little hunt.

I then found green with echoes, parrots, quotes and repeats that related nicely to the radio category.

The three easiest colors can be flipped as I think they are all pretty much the same level of difficulty.

After taking green, my goal was to take them in reverse order, but I took the yellow category first. Fun ways to jump into the pool include backflips, belly flops, cannonballs, and jackknifes.

Blue was a memorizing fill today with Anchor, Backbone, Cornerstone, and Pillar. Supported the rest of today's connections.

Are you reading this late in the day? According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3.3 out of 5.

Today's puzzle was always a satisfying solution; I am often surprised at how often the NYT Games crew compares the green and blue categories to other categories.

Yellow was the easy part: jam, pack, ram, etc. ram is a tricky word here because I don't think most people would think it means to pack.

Green was then pretty easy with cook, dishlor, host, server; I tried to make server, byte, server, host work and got caught in a computer trap. It didn't work.

I was concerned about the electromagnetic spectrum from the beginning, but didn't think about visible until I got to the last eight letters. Visible light turned out to be better suited for microwaves, radio, and x-rays than the last four.

Purple makes sense and feels like something you should get much earlier in the bridle, byte, comedian, and drill. It is a sign of a good purple that these answers make me feel like I should have known."