Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #467 on September 18, one step harder than yesterday's answer, this puzzle from Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 33 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, #465

There are spoilers for Connections #466 Only those who want to know the answer to today's Connections should read on

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 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

An even bigger hint: If you watch PBS, watch the party scene before you plan your next trip to France and look for the word for “very”

Now, what's the answer to today's game #466 connection?

Drum roll please

Today's puzzle was fun

Today I hooked the first green category with Birthday, Cocktails, Dinner, and Surprise Party Birthday and cocktails were the first two I hooked up

I grew up on a mixture of Nickelodeon and PBS, so when I saw Masterpiece and Nova I immediately thought of public broadcasting So for me, it was early to close out the blue section with Frontline and Nature

I now had an idea of what the purple category was, but it didn't fit with the remaining words So I chose the prefixes extra, hyper, over, and super

Purple is a city in Angers, France (southwest of Paris, between Le Mans and Nantes The region is known for Champagne, as well as the grape-based liquor from which it takes its name

Nice, pronounced more like niece, is a lovely beach town on the Mediterranean Sea near the Italian border Recommended

Reunion caused the confusion I mentioned earlier because I had never heard of it It is because of colonialism Reunion is an island off the eastern coast of Africa, east of Madagascar, that has been settled by French subjects since the 17th century but was uninhabited before the French arrived It is also technically part of the Eurozone and is maintained as a region of France

It really feels like a learning week

I'm reading this late in the day According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 32 out of 5

It was interesting today

We started today in the yellow category Decks and gardens were easy to pick from there

For a moment, I wasn't trying to include bloopers, but I saw highlights and sizzle Other than that, I got to the bloopers and demos for the reels and blues, which didn't really fit the categories I had put together

I took a very silly strike in the purple category, which came in third I realized that category was cartoon dogs minus the Y [45] [46] I then went back and looked at the category for the blue pars, and found that the blue pars were the same as the blue pars But for some reason, when I tried to get dope into the group, I had Droopy Dog in my head, even though I had already hidden him in the list

From that moment on, I dropped dope for Lad to get Lad(y)

The green category was obvious early on with info, dish, and scoop, but this was the first time I read the inside scoop definition for dope In my mind, dope means drag (especially weed), cool, stupid, or maskedly painted (which I think is an artful thing to do)

Oxford also means “information on a subject,” “drugged,” or “impure to semiconductors”

It's always nice to learn a little something new