Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #461 from September 14, a little easier than yesterday's answer, this puzzle from Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 34 out of 5

We update our Connections clues and hints 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 have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #460

There are spoilers for Connections #461 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 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 is a bigger clue It's the weekend Let's relax with a glass of wine and hope our cars work with buttons instead of touchscreens Before you fill in the beginning, ask yourself who is king?

Now, what's the answer to today's game #461, Connection?

Drum roll please

Down the line today

So first we grabbed grapes, winery, region, and vintage in yellow I put California first and got a strike, but this is regional

I went down the console path of Super, Pro, Switch, Retro, which took strikes This resulted in seeing a green category with buttons, knobs, sliders, and switches for console inputs

Connections tell us if we are close to a category, and by rethinking pro, super, and retro, we began to see sub as a word prefix

As a result, purple Burger King, California King, Lion King, and Prom King were easily filled in Fun category

I'm reading this late in the day According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 37 out of 5

I'm always surprised when I learn a difficult category quickly, because it seems so obvious against a supposedly “easy” category

Today I saw beans and cows in the blue category, went to Jack, and then to Giant, a fragment of the Jack and the Beanstalk story I think this could easily be in the yellow or green category

When I saw Civic, I was trying to put the yellow category with Bolt It clicked from there, and the Beetle immediately jumped out at me I had forgotten about the Ford Focus, but I was able to put it in the purple category

There are so many traps in the yellow category that I was really surprised that it was considered the easiest category If I hadn't already gotten rid of the Volt, I would have taken strikes trying to fit in Energy, Juice, Life, and Zip That's right, I took strikes to try to get Pep to function

I was so preoccupied with putting the yellow group together that I never looked at the green category Yellow was so easy to understand that it was frustrating when I got a strike with the wrong word

The palindromes as a category are cool: level, pep, riffer, tenet

The difficulty of this level actually comes from how tricky the yellow category is from the jump with six possible words available to fit the group If the yellow category is the easiest, should the yellow category be the hardest category? I don't disagree, but it still seems odd to me to knock out the “difficult” grouping so quickly just because the “easy” ones don't line up